Which book would you take back, which book do you think would have the greatest impact? Note that this applies to non-fiction books only, and no music, no movies, no photographs, nothing that can’t be reprinted, distributed and widely read with the technologies of the day.
I’ve chosen the date of 1750 because Western society is post-Renaissance and post-Enlightenment. It’s a highly literature society with a tradition of empirical enquiry, but technologically the Industrial Revolution has yet to get under way, and economically and politically, apart from the continental United States and South America, Western Europe hasn’t quite begun its widespread expansion into or influence upon Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Battle of Plassey in India hasn’t quite happened yet. They’re modern, but they’re still malleable, if you can just bring them the right volume. Or - are they?
The CRC Handbook of Chemistry & Physics. Also to be considered are any of a number books of integrals and books with high-precision computations of logarithms and trigonometric functions. But the CRC Handbook is the single volume of the most generally and specifically useful knowledge I know of.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer.
Anything scientific, they will learn themselves in their own good time, and even that has maybe been learned much faster already than the growth of the wisdom to use it.
Machinery’s Handbook (whatever edition is most current). This is the “bible” of the metalworking and mechanical trades which should help the Industrial Revolution along.
Britain in 1750 would be a candidate for the most productive place to try and influence events. A copy of <whatever> delivered to all the Fellows of the Royal Society, maybe?
Why America? It’s a colonial backwater in 1750, don’t forget. London, Paris, Edinburgh, Prague, Berlin, Moscow, wherever you think it’ll do the most good, then maybe Boston.
Agreed, thus my question. Which of those places? For example, in 1750 both London and Paris are about to deal with revolutions, though it’s much closer to home for Paris. If we give either of them technology, there’s a nontrivial chance the 1750 powers could turn things around and put down the revolutions that were successful in our timeline.
I’m torn between “The Way Things Work” or a modern microbiology text. Chem, they’ll figure out on their own—especially if the donor can be there to reproduce the periodic table etc from memory, but micro will totally change the way they view medicine. And IMHO, changing medicine to a scientific pursuit will most help the most people in 1750.
I don’t have a specific title, but if there’s a book out there about the history of racism, violence & degradation of non-white males in America since the Revolution, I’d take that back and give it to one of the founding fathers, just to see if it has any effect on their phrasing of certain parts of the Constitution.
Pretty well all the chemistry, and much of the physics (most of what they didn’t know already), would be gibberish to them. They would not have the concepts. The chemical atomic theory did not arrive until 1808, so stuff about atoms, molecules, and bonds would be incomprehensible (they might know the words, but they would have different meanings). Most of the chemicals would be either unknown substances, or known under quite different names.
An elementary science textbook, the sort of thing written today for kids beginning in science, might be a bit more appropriate, because it would actually introduce basic concepts, but they would probably dismiss it as nonsense. They would not have seen the evidence that convinced people at the time of the relevant discoveries (probably few people, even scientists, today know why most of the basic concepts of science are as they are, we just accept most of it on authority), and they would have no reason to respect the authority of a book written at a level appropriate for children.
I don’t know enough about the topic to recommend a specific title, but I’d go for a good-quality history of slavery and its aftermath, one that makes it crystal clear that most people in 1750 are on the wrong side of history, and that future generations are going to pay dearly for today’s cheap sugar and cotton. I have no idea whether it will actually have any effect, but it’s worth trying.
A lot would be gibberish, but not all of it. There’s a lot of information in the book, covering a lot of things. It’s presented at an advanced level, but a lot of it is basic physical and chemical properties. The handbook is not abstract. From the few points they could understand, they could start bridging the gaps.
My intent was not to give a book that would explain modern physics and chemistry, but one that gives a compendium of useful measurements made with the knowledge of modern science. By confirming things they could measure, it would guide them to new things to look at. Theory will follow naturally, just as it did in our history.
Of course getting it to the right people would be critically important. Ideally, I’d give a copy to a leading university in each of Britain, France and what is now Germany, plus one to Japan.
I’d consider the Merck Index, not the CRC, if only that it gives therapeutic uses for chemicals and all the common names for the chemical, along with the general physical data.