All that’s necessary is to publicly predict the future.
Standard Oil is no longer in existence. The time to buy was 101 years ago, before the Supreme Court broke them up in May 1910.
You’ll also want to wait to buy GM as they go through a re-org in, I think, 1920. Any money put into their parent company will likely be lost.
Edit: Actually, the re-org was in 1910 - you’ll be OK.
1912 gives me enough time to get a jump on Kolmogorov, Turing and Shannon. It might be a niche sort of fame, but it’d work.
Instead of 100 years, I’d rather go back, say, 60. Around 1950. Before I leave, I memorize the lyrics to all the songs written by the Beatles. In 1950, I publish them. Small print run, just a few hundred copies that are never offered to the general public. Just enough to establish copyright, but not big enough that anyone will take note of them.
Sometime around, say, 1967 or so, I emerge from obscurity, and sue them for copyright infringement. I’m remembered as the eccentric musical genius from whom a group of Liverpool hacks shamelessly stole. And I live like a king on the money they made from music they actually wrote.
Copyright infringement and fraud in the courts is against the OP rules.
Fraud and copyright law do not have statutes that account for time-travelers publishing a creator’s work before its inception. He’s not really doing anything illegal.
I’m with the “predict the future” folks. Once you’ve done it enough times in controlled conditions, you’re gonna become very famous.
You’re also gonna become very sought after by the government.
Open up a nickelodeon. With the profits, move to Hollywood and start producing movies. Hire an obscure British comedian named Charlie Chaplin. Offer a contract to Fatty Arbuckle, and have him bring his friend Buster Keaton along. Ask D. W. Griffith to make a feature film for you (but just one).
By the 1920s, you’ll have more big stars than any other studio. You invest in talkies at the end of the era, and never look back.
With what? The proceeds of selling your clothes?
I wouldn’t be too sure. The details vary depending on jurisdiction but fraud, broadly, is obtaining money by deception. Fraud law is not, in any jurisdiction I am aware of, limited by reference to a certain blacklist of prohibited forms of deception.
Except that you would have to choose your predictions very carefully lest they change the course of history, thus ruining your ability to make any further predictions. You’d probably have to limit yourself to natural events.
I’d steal the ideas of as many influential scientists as I can. I might be a bit late for the Bohr model, but I can “invent” penicillin and could probably replicate/steal a few famous experiments. Hershey & Chase, Griffith, Watson & Crick; stuff like that.
This will make you famous? I guess. Rich for sure, but famous?
If I had time to prepare, I’d “write” Lord of the Rings or something.
I think if straight up fame is all you want, memorising the dates of earthquakes and tornadoes and other distinct high profile natural events would do the job nicely. It would be completely inexplicable if you were able to state, years in advance, to the day and hour, when these things would happen.
I think before too long this impossible ability somehow would get you assassinated by someone or seized by the government for a life as a lab rat.
It’s 1912. You’d be a celebrity, and well accepted by the majority of people who believed in the supernatural. Houdini would be trying to debunk you, and get extremely frustrated by your success, perhaps even beginning to believe you. He may laugh when you predict he will die on Halloween, 14 years later. But on Nov. 1, 1926, nobody will ever again doubt your prescience. Imagine the amazement when your time capsule was opened today, revealing the Facebook IPO, a Mormon running for president, and the Giants, once again cheating, to win the Super Bowl.
A Mormon running for President… against the incumbent Negro! :eek:
I could invent decent graphic design and make a reasonable historical impact.
I’m a fairly skilled illustrator, I suppose I could invent Superman a few decades early. Shit, I could invent Role Playing Games. Imagine D&D in a world where Radio is the primary entertainment.
Earthquakes you’re probably ok on, but I suspect the Butterfly Effect would do away with your ability to predict tornados or other wind effects. Just the fact of your being there would ensure the miniscule changes necessary to make those times and places altogether wrong.
Yes, it’s the Butterfly Effect that makes this all implausible 
I like thy style!
(Of course, to subvert this, you could always sell AFVs…exclusively to the Tsar. Timed and used correctly, you might actually become largely forgotten to history, aside from military historians, despite utterly and deliberately rewriting the course of the 20th century.)
I think I like this one even more, despite it’s lack of evilness—well, depending on how rich you’ll make Lorraine Williams from certain properties, if she’s ever born.
Not sure how famous that would make you, since Marconi managed that 15 years earlier already…