It’s a SF trope going back at least as far as Mark Twain. An average modern day person gets sent into the past by some mysterious means and introduces modern technology to the people back then.
But as was pointed out in another thread, how many average people have any idea how modern technology works? Keep in mind we’re talking enough knowledge to get the technology up and running. We’ll assume for the sake of argument that you’ve learned the local language, the local rulers are offering their full support, and you’ll have access to a reasonable amount of supplies, equipment, and assistants. But you have to provide the knowledge - no convenient cheats like saying you happened to bring back your computer or a stack of tech manuals.
Me? I’d fail badly. I give myself credit for having a decent general background on technology but I don’t know the details. For example, I know that steel is made by getting carbon into iron. But I don’t know how that’s done or how much carbon you’re supposed to put in. And I think there might be other metals involved? Manganese? Nickel? I don’t know.
Same thing with electricity. I know it involves electrons moving around but I don’t know how to get them moving. I think a turbine involves a spinning magnet but I’m not sure.
I don’t know how to build an internal combustion engine. And I wouldn’t know how to make the gasoline needed to run one.
I have no idea how a telephone or a radio or a television works. I know photographic film involves some kind of chemicals but I don’t know what they are.
I know gunpowder is made out of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal. I could probably make charcoal but I have no idea where to get sulfur or saltpeter from.
For that matter, I’d be bad at anything to do with obtaining raw materials. Even if I knew the formula for making steel, I have no idea how you get iron or carbon or manganese or nickel. I know bronze was made out of copper and tin and I know tin was hard to get - but I don’t know an easy way to get it.
But enough about my ignorance. How would you do if you got transported back in time?
And let’s keep this focused on technology. No posts about how you’d go back and start your own religion or write Shakespeare’s plays.
I’d find a quiet corner and set myself up as a math teacher.
Otherwise, no, I’d be a rotten time traveller. I’m too dependent on my first-world support structure. No Pepsi? I’m doomed.
(I would be a good support asset for a time-travel team. You need all the cliché archetypes. The big guy with guns; the fast-talker; the stealthy guy who can pick pockets; and the nerd with glasses who knows stuff. I can do that last job.)
I could manage some sort of gasoline and motor and maybe the self-contained firearms cartrige and smokeless powder. Vulcanized rubber would be easy and a few other things. The further back you send me, the better the chances that I could totally screw up the timeline.
I’d be fine (assuming I could speak the language). The trick isn’t trying to change the past and come up with new technology, but knowing the past and making the most of that.
L. Sprague de Camp did a bang-up job with this in his 1939 novel, Lest Darkness Fall.
His 20th century hero gets zinged back to 6th century Rome. To accumulate wealth, the first thing he does is rig up a pot still to turn wine into brandy.
I could do ok in certain time periods. I know how to make black powder from scratch, so that would be useful during a lot of history. I can build a generator from scratch if copper and iron are available, but it would take some time to do anything useful with it. From the bronze age forward I could make a steam engine, but that would be a costly venture and it might be difficult to convince anyone of the utility in a time when manpower was readily available. And even with knowledge like that it takes time to gather and prepare the materials, requiring basic tools to be available. Instead of trying to take a leap in technology it would be easier to just advance the current level of technology.
I think the trick isn’t doing everything yourself, but finding a group of intelligent people and starting your own age of enlightenment.
I can’t build an internal combustion engine or even a steam engine, but I can describe how they work. My calculus is a bit rusty, but I can convince someone to take what I have and start inventing calculus with that. I know enough about electricity to kick off serious research into that field. I can put together enough of the periodic table that some researchers can fill in the gaps. And I know enough about modern markets and incentives to get people the money they need in that environment to get things done. Even with my old fashioned knowledge of the nuclear model, it should be enough to start chemistry.
Maybe the biggest contribution would be sanitation and its relationship to disease. Although certainly not a specialist, what I know is immeasurable versus knowledge in the past.
All of this presupposes the absolute support of the reigning monarch, though.
The big thing is knowing what is possible. Given the parameters of the OP, I could do quite well in just about any time. You don’t need to know the specifics. Just enough of the general and what is possible will set the minds of the age going.
I tend to disagree. It’s the difference between science and science fiction. Anyone can describe a flying machine. But actually building a flying machine takes a lot of engineering work.
Assuming that I could avoid getting burned at the stake, I imagine that the greatest thing I could offer (which would be particularly prone to getting me burned at the stake) is the concept of meritocracy and then demonstrating how you can create things in bulk via factory processes and improve quality over time, while enriching everyone in the region.
I’m an IT guy. I can code. But what I really know about technology is what tech companies to invest in over the past say 30 years or so. So if I was going back, that’s as far back as I’d want to go.
If I had the time, I’d make a great time traveler.
Naw, I’d just make a paper airplane (before Leonardo Da Vinci), then tell the locals to scale it up till their King or chieftain can lay down inside of it, then push him off a cliff. Imagine their delight seeing their leader soar through the air. They’d hoot and holler and hoist me up in the air!
Yes, I go back to 14th century Brazil, tap some rainforest rubber trees for latex, vulcanize it with sulfur and cut it into rings. Then I’d just need some sea shells or nut shells with holes cut into the middle and bent twigs. The Europeans would be hesitant to enter the jungles if the indigenous people were armed with plenty of these.
Of course, if they did enter, and more advanced weaponry was required, I’d teach them to make these.
Being a scientist and tinkerer, and having been a Boy Scout, working with things in the woods with minimal technical backup, I think I could do a pretty decent job. I’;m no Hank Morgan (Mark Twain’s factory-foreman hero on a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, who boasted he could build just about anything, and eventually does) or Martin Padway (L. Sprague de Camp’s hero in Lest Darkness Fall), but I think I could make a few improvements and reconstitute some 20th-21st century comforts.
de Camp’s hero seems more likely tat Twain’s. He knows the proportions for gunpowder, but can’t get it to work. On the other hand, he eventually reinvents paper, and one of his first contraptions (on which he makes money) is his still. He finds a lot of social resistance to his inventions, and is surprised when it’s the simple and unexpected things – like double-entry bookkeeping – that have the biggest impact.Leo Frankowski’s Cross-Time Engineer (from the series of that name) had similar experiences.
I can see profound problems with making gunpowder, for instance. If you’re not near a volcanic (or formerly volcanic) region, sulfur isn’t going to be easy to find. You need to know about the right kind of soil or its bacteria to produce saltpeter. (Do you know what it looks like, or how pure it is?) Even if you get the components and remember or dope out the proportions, you have to be careful mixing it, or you risk maiming yourself. The more likely output, though, is what a couple of my friends from high school encountered when they tried making it – nothing. It just fizzled.
You can make potassium nitrate using compost and ashes as long as you have a vessel to heat water. Decaying wood from man-made structures makes the best compost, but you could get by with the underside of rotting logs in the woods. Lacking that compost all your excrement and urine for a year. Even a clay pot should do for a heating vessel. Sulfur has been available since ancient times, but if you can’t find any it’s not a necessity. Lacking sulfur would reduce the burn rate of the powder, but you would still get a mix sufficient for rockets and simple cannon. Other substances could be substituted but it would require trial and error with what you can find. You do have to know hot to mix it properly, weighing the components, mixing it wet, drying it, and then corning it. However, unless you find some natural source of saltpeter it’s going to take a lot of time to mix up a little bit of gunpowder. Your best result might be mixing in some metal filings to make a nice firework fountain. As with anything you do, it will take time and you’d have to convince others that you can make something worthwhile and enlist their help, all while staying alive somehow.
What time am I going back to? What is it I’m trying to accomplish?
If it’s just “Get along without being found out as a weirdo” I’d do just fine as long as I’m not going back to a place where the English is too far removed from modern English to understand. I act well, I get along in different situations well, and I can blend in.
I the idea is to make money or improve society based on things I know, I’m not sure. Again, depends how far back we’re talking. I could help doctors a lot just based on rudimentary things anyone today knows, if anyone would listen. If we start in 1903 I know who won the World Series every year, so I can make lots of money on that.
I think this kind of thing is necessary for results. Here you are alone in the past trying to survive and use your knowledge to accomplish something in a world in which you are not well suited. If you can make money gambling, or make some startling predictions about unexpected events you could gain some notice. Otherwise trying to convince people you can make a new device you’ll be considered crazy and applying your knowledge is going to be difficult.
