Get a ride out to Los Alamos, and give a 10 minute pitch to Edward Teller about how to build an H-bomb. Then explain why bigger is not better–of course, Eddie would ignore that…
My complete set of lower dental implants would be quite impressive.
An x-ray would reveal evidence of my two arthroscopic knee surgeries.
I’m also wondering whether there’s anything in my blood that would be evidence . . . like antibodies for strains of diseases that wouldn’t exist yet.
And . . . hmmmmm . . . I was 5 years old in 1950. Suppose I find that kid and compare fingerprints.
I know that the Internet is a series of tubes, so I’d be able to get construction on that started right away.
Well, I’ve got metal in my body that would be unlike any metal from 1950, if I could talk some surgeon into removing it safely and then talk a metalurgist into examining it.
of course, that metal would probubly prevent me from time-travelling so I’m screwed.
Strange fillings and artificial knees? You’d be taken away by the CIA and you would be suspected of having traveled from the Soviet Union, where you must have been an officer, spy, or worse. If the USA does not have these things, then they must.
I am not much on panic as its depicted in movies and such, but there was a certain atmosphere that had developed. The USA was advanced, the Soviets were secretive, a threat, and possibly the only ones worthy of concern in terms of eventually matching/passing our advancement. I believe this mood had already started taking a foothold in the USA in the early 50’s (Obviously, assuming most posters are from the USA).
You might have to break the rules of this thread’s game (no predictions) and start making some damn meaningful ones real fast, because showing robot parts and funky unknown dental work would make everyone panic in that you must be the beneficiary of some secret, advanced, Soviet machine.
Or the result of an alien abduction. “Abductees” have been claiming such bodily mods for a long time, but you’d be the first who could prove it.
Awesome.
I think the only people you may succeed in convincing that you were from 2009 would be your parents and perhaps some extended family members. Of course you would need to have been born a number of years prior to 1950 and have some personal and confidential information shared between you and each family member. Between this information revelation, and their comparing the voice and appearance similarities between 2009 you and 1950 you, you have a good chance of convincing them that you are from the future, assuming your 1950 family had an open mind to such possibilities. Then, possibly, if your family had a reputation in the community for being honest and clear-headed, they and you together could convince others. Then you can talk about all the tech stuff in your head and they should accept it as being from the future. (BTW, are the 1950 and 2009 you’s together at this point? That could make things considerable easier—mature you should have little trouble convincing little you of your shared pedigree).
…or, we could just cheat the OP parameters and send you back in a pair of computer pajamas with a screen on your chest showing a variety of YouTube videos.
So that’s how Teletubbies got started!
Well, I don’t think that I could do a very good job of it, but I know of some transplant patients that probably could if they were the ones sent back.
Once you jump back, your presence would fork off a different time line and subsequent events would differ from what you remember. Thus predictions would be worthless: you wouldn’t know winning lottery numbers, sport’s teams, or presidential candidates.
I love the DNA idea. All you’d have to know is double helix, A-G, T-C and you’d be famous. Even more so if you happen to remember a few amino acid codons. The Pluto-Charon idea is good, too. Of course, these wouldn’t prove you were from 2009.
If you could wait a few decades you could predict the 1987 Megellanic Cloud supernova. Or the comet strike on Jupiter in…1994, 96? Hale-Bopp sometime in the mid-90’s.
Again, you aren’t allowed to prove it through prediction, as per the OP. So far almost all the ideas presented that would work are predictions. That’s what makes it a challenge.
If we can predict things, I can tell you the result of every baseball playoff game from the 1950 World Series on, every MVP, every Cy Young Award winner, all the Super Bow results, Stanley Cup winners… there’s no possible way someone could predict it to the degree I remember it without, well, remembering it. Predictions are easy. You could convince anyone.
Dental work is an interesting idea.
Too many of the replies rely on 2009 tech going with them to 1950, which is kind of cheating. Examples are the aforementioned dentures, dental implants, metal plates or screws, pacemakers, missing organs with tiny scars, etc. Without items or medical procedures performed in our era with our time’s technology and materials, you would have a difficult time convincing anyone in 1950 you are from 2009.
Yes, your implanted 2009 tech that time warped with you might convince some people in 1950, but it would be the 2009 tech doing the convincing, not you or what you say.
So, how do you convince someone without resorting to 2009 implanted tech or your impossible for 1950 medical procedures?
I’m thinking 12 Monkeys here.
Me, I would head to Chicago and the Board of Trade or Mercantile exchange. I’d learn 'em a thing or two about arbitraging with futures and options. I would also correctly predict the 1987 crash, 1997 crash and 2008 meltdown. 
There’s a difference between predicting election and sports winners and predicting astronomical events. The former are probability outcomes which would mostly come out differently that you remember from your former timeline. The latter are predictible events because they would have already happened or would already be “in progress” - just unknown at the time.
With no “predictions” your options for convincing others of your origins would be to reveal some yet-unknown scientific or mathematical fact or to reveal some currently happening but publicly unknown event. I personally don’t know any such events. What novel was Hemingway working on? If I knew, and could quote passages of it, I might be able to convince him.
The trouble with scientific facts, assuming you knew any, is that 1950’s science would have to be able to test them. DNA is perfect because they were on the verge of finding the structure. But just that one thing could be dismissed as a lucky guess (or leaked info from some secret Soviet lab). You’d need a suite of “hits” to actually be able to convince people. I’ve seen maps of the back side of the moon, but unfortunately I don’t remember any details; if I did, that would be a real shocker once the first lunar satellite was launched. I remember a few structures on Mars and a number of facts about the solar system that could be confirmed once probes were launched. I could present my planetoid-impact theory of the origin of the moon and make a case for plate tectonics. I know that some combination of yttrium, copper, and oxygen super-conducts at liquid nitrogen temperature. I could suggest looking for iridium at the KT boundary and evidence for a meteor impact on the Yucatan peninsula. I wish I knew the locations of some productive fossil beds. Was Leaky already working at Olduvai Gorge?
As for a technology boost, the best I could do would be to introduce some software techniques I know. Maybe we could skip over Fortran and go straight to OO programming. I think a chemist or microbiologist would have better luck.
Great Scott! I’m too late in finding this thread! :smack:
I have DREAMS of going back to the early 60’s with my laptop and cell-phone (sitting naked in class, of course), but then my “rational” mind kicks in and I tell myself (even in the dream itself) that, “Q, what would you show them???”
The technology just wasn’t “there” yet!
(Fiber-Optics and stuff, I mean!)
Hell, they had all just gotten into 8-tracks and “touch-tone” phones!
And, I guess, if you take it to the 50’s, the same thing would apply.
Q
Excellent start! Just what I was going to say.
That made a fortune back in the day, and being a few years early would give you enough money to start gathering some engineers and designers to get things going.
For some extra (fairly easy) cash inventions:
Slip 'n Slides
Pop top cans.
Seat belts for cars.
Disposable lighters.
Disposable razors (my neighbor was pissed, as he felt he invented those, but neglected to get a patent!)
Post-It notes.
Television info commercial showing:
Snuggies
Chia pets
George Foreman grills
By this time, you should have millions of dollars to start getting those employees to start really working on doing some other stuff - and Bill Gates might be one of your best employees.
This would be my angle, I think—I could roughly draw out the Teller-Ulam design from memory, along with a couple of other, simpler atomic designs—I don’t know how much of those would even have been close to declassified, even in the most general outlines, in 1950—and I know about the Colossus computer, which was still classified. Also that he was gay—which might help corroborate my story, but might not get his cooperation.
So maybe if I stood outside of Los Alamos (or Teller’s house) with a big sheet of posterboard reading “NON-CRYOGENIC HYDROGEN BOMB DESIGN [schematic sketch]—P.S. PHILBY, FUCHS, AND THE ROSENBERGS ARE SPIES!” I might be able to convince them I was from the future, although I’m probably going to spend several decades being worked over by g-men. :smack:
After that…hey, I was born in the 1980s, after about thirty more years of above-ground nuclear testing (about ten, not counting China), and I was around for Chernobyl. Am I going to have noticeably larger amounts of radioactive material in my body than a local?