# Where (and when) would you send a computer to the past? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 18, 2014, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-and-when-would-you-send-a-computer-to-the-past/707610 "2014-12-18T21:51:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Artemis\_Tardis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4bbf92/32.png) [@Artemis\_Tardis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Artemis_Tardis)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-and-when-would-you-send-a-computer-to-the-past/707610/1 "2014-12-18T21:51:09Z")
Time travel is still a fantasy, full of rules, ifs and buts. But let’s say you decided to travel to 1945, bringing a computer - a high-end notebook. Where would this computer be of better use, in your opinion? And when? Consider the fact that the computer comes also with a hand-powered generator (if it was sent to times with no electricity) and also with a hard drive with relevant wikipedia articles saved on it. What impact do you think this computer would cause to today’s history? (consider that you will not cease to exist because of the computer, neither will your time machine. You will get back home safe and sound). ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2014, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-and-when-would-you-send-a-computer-to-the-past/707610/2 "2014-12-19T02:27:49Z")
Well one thing is to have lots of sports articles in the Wiki section so after a year or two of being correct at having predicting the exact won-loss records of all 16 major league teams and the top batting averages, etc. it will be believed. I think that would be the easiest thing (on Wiki) to verify as coming from the future. The full stock page for one day months in the future for the Wall Street Journal would be pretty good, too, but that’s not the type of think on Wiki. The next question is who do you want to know all this. If you publicly predict 9/11 does it just cause the same thing to happen a year earlier? But I’m not at all sure to whom I trust to give all the information. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2014, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-and-when-would-you-send-a-computer-to-the-past/707610/3 "2014-12-19T04:57:30Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > Well one thing is to have lots of sports articles in the Wiki section so after a year or two of being correct at having predicting the exact won-loss records of all 16 major league teams and the top batting averages, etc. it will be believed. I think that would be the easiest thing (on Wiki) to verify as coming from the future. The full stock page for one day months in the future for the Wall Street Journal would be pretty good, too, but that’s not the type of think on Wiki. It would only take a day. At [Baseball-reference.com](http://Baseball-reference.com), you can show people the complete box score of tomorrows’s game. Not because the computer is so great, but because it would prove that you came from the future. You wouldn’t need the computer for that, you could take newspaper clippings to show them the results of tomorrow’s ball games, and then once they trusted you to know the future reliably, any decent summary of recent history would do. The computer itself is overrated. It still can’t tell me who is going to win the Packer game this Sunday, and I would’t believe it if it said it could. It would be less useful for that than a clipping from Monday’s paper. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2014, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-and-when-would-you-send-a-computer-to-the-past/707610/4 "2014-12-19T07:55:56Z")
Bletchley Park, 1939. WW2 would have been much shorter, even if the computer didn’t have info on Enigma and Purple. Just the ability to run codes far faster than the electromechanical bombes would have been a huge help. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2014, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-and-when-would-you-send-a-computer-to-the-past/707610/5 "2014-12-19T09:23:25Z")
I’d travel to the mid-1980s with the chemical forumlae and manufacturing instructions for [transparent aluminum,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride) which I’d trade to some mid-level factory manager in exchange for several large 6" plexiglass sheets. Just for lulz. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2014, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-and-when-would-you-send-a-computer-to-the-past/707610/6 "2014-12-19T10:51:16Z")
My bedroom when I was 15. Obviously. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2014, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-and-when-would-you-send-a-computer-to-the-past/707610/7 "2014-12-19T20:41:06Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > It would only take a day. At [Baseball-reference.com](http://Baseball-reference.com), you can show people the complete box score of tomorrows’s game. Not because the computer is so great, but because it would prove that you came from the future. You wouldn’t need the computer for that, you could take newspaper clippings to show them the results of tomorrow’s ball games, and then once they trusted you to know the future reliably, any decent summary of recent history would do. Hell, the clippings would be better. They would survive the trip; your ability to access [baseball-reference.com](http://baseball-reference.com) over the Web wouldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-and-when-would-you-send-a-computer-to-the-past/707610/8 "2014-12-20T02:21:09Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Hell, the clippings would be better. They would survive the trip; your ability to access [baseball-reference.com](http://baseball-reference.com) over the Web wouldn’t. The premise was that the hard drive had the relevant Wiki articles saved on it so you’d not need to have internet access. And it may just be my way of thinking, but I believe a series of predictions is more convincing than a one time big prediction. I somehow think that predicting all the box scores for tomorrow gets the reaction – how the hell did he know that? – he’d never be able to do that again. But this isn’t answering the OP’s question. Who would I trust in 1945 to give this to? I’m not really sure. You’d be giving an incredible amount of power to the individual.