Occasionally I play this mind game; I imagine that I've returned to Europe in the Middle Ages wearing only my "birthday suit." My task is to single-handedly introduce my ancestors to modern technology using only the information I carry in my head.

This is not a such a simple task. For example, I might describe a cellular telephone to the King of France. He would blink a few times and say, "Alright, build one." It's not enough that I simply tell them about my technology. If I cannot reproduce this technology, then I'm a charlatan in their eyes.

The human brain has not dramatically changed within the past 100,000 years. Modern man's morality is likewise only a trifle improved over the ancients. The only thing that makes me different from a man living in ancient times is my advanced science and technology. Yet the average modern man hasn't a clue how technology actually works, or how he might reproduce it from scratch. Technology is little different than magic to most folks.

So, I'm asking you to prove that technolgy is more than magic to you. Your scientific credentials might be impeccable, but I'm not asking you to recreate scientific theories, I'm asking you to recreate technology, in-the-flesh. Using only those materials available at the time, what could you devise that would convince Medieval technicians that you have come to them from the future?

Here is what I could do (you have the right to challange my claims):

I could construct transistors. Using these transistors I could build radio transmitters and receivers.

I might reduce the rate of infection in hospitals through improved hygiene, and by using simple disinfectants (ethyl alchohol).

I could improve the metallurgy of steel production. I could build more accurate machine tools

What could you do?

Michael

Orthogonal

What could you do?

Build a 'Cotton Gin.'

Build a crude wood lathe and possibly a metal lathe. Of course a bicycle style power machine run by human power would also be required to power the lathes. Once crude lathes are made, you keep upgrading the lathes until they can produce effective machined parts to build other tools and other machinery. From there, who knows ?

There should be enough materials to build a crude handglider. Would you be burned at the stake if you could fly ?

Q,

Nice to hear from you, thanks for the reply.

Now I'm very picky about my little game, so please bear all my objections with a good nature. :)

I'll have to remind you that the Medieval Europeans didn't wear much in the way of cotton, so a cotton gin wouldn't be very useful (they wore mostly linen made from flax and wool clothes).

My next objection is that they already had crude foot powered lathes in the Middle Ages. The problem with machine tools wasn't so much with the form, as it was with the materials available, specifically, cast iron of the correct properties and above all, tool steel. The modern machine-age is mostly a product of improved metallurgy.

The game is to use the information you have in your head at this very moment. In this case you would have to refine iron ore to reduce the impurities to an acceptable level (common sulpher impurities for example produces an unacceptable brittleness), and to produce a steel with the proper percentage of carbon. Could you do this? Many brilliant men worked their entire lives to refine this technology.

But materials aside, how would you produce a dead-flat lathe bed for example, from a casting using simple only hand-tools? It can be done, but my question is, could you do it?

It's not the point of this game to say "who knows?" The point is that you already have to know what to do when your feet hit the ground. We already know that the ancients tinkered their lives away to "get it right." You don't have the luxury of tinkering your life away in this game. You have to get to work straight-away using the procedures and skills that you bring with you from 2002, to produce timely results.

The ancients were every bit as brilliant and practical as you and I are today. There was no scarcity of ingenuity in their day. What they lacked was the ability that you and I have to "stand on the shoulders of giants," simply because many of the giants had not yet been born.

Q, I'm asking you to be very specific as to how you, standing on the shoulders of giants, would produce something. In most cases you would have to produce a tool, to produce a tool, to produce a tool,..., to produce the end product.

Regards,
Michael

Q,

No, in this game if you build a telescope the natives clap you on the back and offer their daughter to you in marriage, instead of burning you at the stake or placing you under house-arrest. ;)

The hang glider is a good idea, but would you make the demonstration flights in it yourself? What materials would you use for the rigging? Would you trust your life to the cordage of the time? For example, would you use the ropes commonly used in ships at that time? Aeronautics is as much about strength-of-materials as it is about lift/drag ratios, and proper wing surface cross-sections. Remember all those sad silent movies of people jumping off of roof-tops to their death in fairly credible looking gliders? I suppose you could give a minimal training to the peasants and let them be your test pilots. Still, if you killed too many of your peasant-pilots, I'd think they would start to question if you really came from 2002, that is, if you really knew what you were doing.

Generally, I think a hang glider is a good answer Q, but only for a man who actually has a fair number of hours under-his-belt building and flying hang-gliders. This game is to find out not what could be done by men who return back in time from 2002; I've no doubt there are men alive today that know any given technology from top to bottom. The game is much more personal. It asks what you specifically could do with the information you have in your head at this very moment.

I have a general idea of what is done in heart-bypass surgery, but I don't think for a moment that I could save the life of a Medieval man by performing a heart bypass operation myself. Perhaps a skilled cardiologist could do this with simple tools and by extracting his own anesthesia from common plants? It would be fun to hear a cardiologist speak about this possibility. In any case, the question is for each person to tell what he could do, using his present skills and understanding.

Michael

Orthogonal

I may have misinterpreted your game plan. I was under the impression that if I were to venture back in time to the Medieval Era, I would at the very least prepare myself with the proper knowledge and experience to undertake any of these ventures. Say for example, I could learn the art of folding metal to make it stronger similar to the early Japanese sword makers. This information was not readily available to those living in that Era (except in Japan of course).

I already design and build my own model gliders and planes as a hobby but would probably need to have a clear understanding of building a hand glider that could support a man. You may be correct in that the materials would not be available that could provide enough strength yet be light enough to build a hand glider.

I remember building a bow in high school using the technique of lamination. Perhaps using this technique, I could build the materials that would give the glider it's strength. Was silk available back then ?

I think I would be confident enough to fly it myself. I would rather be pulled behind a horse on an open plane as opposed to jumping off a cliff. ;)

I apologize for my opaque rule-set, Q. Yes of course you may go take a class in the forging of Damascus steels, and I might one day go to medical school where I would learn to perform open heart surgery. The only restriction is that you have to take yourself as you are when you play the game. Hypothetically, an intelligent man could learn any technology and any set of skills. We already have a good idea what it is possible for a man to know, the question is what you know when you play this game.

The game is able to tell us quite a bit about ourselves. Einstein supposedly said, "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother." This is roughly the same idea as explaining your 21st Century technology to a Medieval craftsman.

Occasionally, a modern metallurgist used to computer controlled furnaces and emission spectrometry melt-sampling, will try to refine his own copper ore with the use of a goat-skin bellows and a charcoal-fired clay furnace. To make a success of such an experiment requires a very refined understanding of the art.

I read a true story some years ago of a group of British soldiers in a Japanese POW camp that were able to build a working shortwave radio by making their own components (capacitors, resistors, etc.). They managed to smuggle in a vacuum tube and a pair of headphones, but they made everything else. This is what prompted me to make my own (admittedly crude) transistor. However, I spent several years of part-time effort in the University library before I was able to accomplish this.

One of my favorite films was, The Flight of the Phoenix. This is the film where Jimmy Stewart crashes his airplane in the desert. Among the survivors is Hardy Kruger, a model airplane designer. Together the surviors manage to assemple a smaller aircraft from the wreckage of the larger aircraft, and fly this airplane back to civilization. I'm such a sucker for these films. Das Boot is another such film in which men faced with a desperate situation pool their technical skills, and through a communal will to live, they find a soulution. Another film titled, Escape of the Birdmen was set in a German POW camp. In this film the Allied prisoners construct a glider from bed sheets and sticks. They used the starch in the potato gruel to size the wings, and a bathtub dropped down a shaft to catapult it on it's flight to Switzerland. The movie was based on a real story, though in real-life, the prisoners didn't have time to finish the aircraft. As I said, I love these films.

A real-life event which really caught my imagination was the discovery of "Oetzi", the so-called iceman in the Italian Alps. Oetzi carried spare parts and tools to repair his equipment. He carried an axe made of copper. High levels of arsenic were found in his hair, which is indirect proof that he must have had a hand at copper smelting (arsenic is a common impurity in copper ore, and escapes as a volatile during smelting). I believe that Oetzi was by far, more of a master of his enviroment than any of us are today. Oetzi undertood how to make a bow, what plants were edible, and how to produce his own metal products. How many of us understand the technology upon which our own lives depend to such a degree? A dead cell phone battery leaves many of us in a state of helplessness. BTW, if you hadn't heard, some months ago an arrow-head was found lodged under Oeti's ribs. He didn't lose his way and freeze to death as speculation earlier suggested, he had been killed. His violent death helped make sense to me of his copper axe. A copper axe is so soft as too be nearly useless for cutting wood, though it would be lethal enough when used as a weapon against unarmored humans.

Oh yes Q, silk from the Orient was available in Medieval Europe(though rather expensive). Well, as usual I've rambled on far too long.

Michael

I think that with a little playing around with ingredients, I could build a decent gun.

I might be able to do penicillin.

I could get hydro or wind electricity generation going.

I think I could handle lightbulbs.

Probably improved mining techniques.

My knowledge of political theory (probably pretty standard now, but most of us have more academic education than our equivalents of a thousand years ago) might well change history, if put to good use.

I could, with the help of smiths, create a steam engine. After which more could be made. Wow, heavy transport! Motorised ships!

Whichever happened to be my favourite country/region/culture, I could tell them about Australia, maybe give them an entire continent centuries before it was really invaded. Maybe, with some sweet-talk, get them to do it without slaughtering all the locals, as happened in the real world.

PS: The bladesmiths of Europe had, as early as 1600 years ago, pattern-welded blades which could match Japanese swords of a thousand years later for strength and edge-hardness and core-flexibility. If people wish to discuss this with me, perhaps another thread is suitable.

Orthogonal

Now that I have a better understanding of the ground rules, I find your mind game most interesting. I'll now have to go away and think about this some more.

I may have a slight disadvantage in not being up to speed as you are with Medieval history in terms of what was and was not available in regards with tools and materials.

Any help on your part might make the exercise a little easier and would place everyone on a level playing field. Is it possible to post some good links as to what was and was not available ? That of course, may be asking a lot. :)

Thanks in advance.

I would like to put in my two cents.

Somewhere in this forum, I posted about the description of how to build a flying machine (Vimana) that was passed on from one generation to another. By the time, it was put on written words, the meaning have been so distorted because the people who wrote it could not comprehend what they are writing about. So, basically all the construction details of advanced machinaries and technology (the third veda I think) are useless.

There is a good example in "Backto future" where doc ended up in 1800s and they had to comeback to today or the future...

If we go before that but blacksmithing is available then:

Gun
Black powder
Fireworks
Rocket
Steam engine
Aspirin
Ethyl Alcohol
Crude Oil
Natural Gas
Lathe
Compressor
Dynamo
Lead-Acid Battery
Light Bulb
Printing
Sanitation
Transformer
Alternator
Electric motor
Vaccum Tube
Many lectric appliances
Adsorption refrigerator
Curling Iron
Electric Fan
etc etc.....

I think, one can follow the inventions and developments in the last 200 years and develop the products at much faster rate since later products will depend on previous products. For example, once you build battery then you can build alternator and transformer to carry electricity.

Hey, that could be fun, in a desperate struggle for survival sort of way. It's actually the premise of a favorite SF series of mine, by Leo Frankowski. (A local author.) The Cross-Time Engineer (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345327624/qid=1024109641/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-0978491-8797468)

Being a mechanical designer by trade, with an interest in obsolete industrial technolgies, there's a lot I could do. You'd have to start small, naturally, assuming you didn't show up with real working capital. Remember, we're talking an age when virtually everybody but the wealthy elite were living at the edge of starvation...

Canning. Easy to do with the technology available back then, using properly glazed pottery and wax. Food preservation technology would be worth a fortune in a society where a substantial fraction of the produce was lost to vermin and decay.

Windmills. Need a source of power for so many things you'd want to do, and a source of power which didn't involve human or animal muscle; A terrible fraction of their agricultural output went to feeding beasts of burden.

After that, well, chemistry was a hobby of mine when I was a teen, given a source of power I could make all sorts of interesting things, using my knowlege of modern chemistry. Forget gun powder, I'd go straight to smokeless powder. I'm sure I could get something for aluminum; It was long considered more precious than gold.

That would be a start.

For aluminium you need high current DC Power. So you need to start battery and electrical system first. Since you are a mechanical designer - you could come up a lot of machinaries.

When I studied engineering, at the time the course was heavy in all engineering fields ( a long ago). So, my generation engineers can do metallurgy, chemical, civil (for water, building design, irrigation), mechanical and electrical (includes electronics/ computers). So a few of us can do all sorts of stuff.

Actually, while I'm a mechanical designer by trade, I'm an electrical engineer by training, and I took a dual major in college, the second being human biology.

You can do the batteries, by the way, I'd go with a windmill and generator.

Lightbulbs

What would you use for a filament? Thomas Edison tried thousands of filaments before settling on one. Do you know which one he used? The usual filament in a modern incandescent lightbulb is tungsten. Do you know how to isolate this metal from its ore? If it is not highly purified, the impurities released when it glows white-hot will destroy the high-vacuum required inside the bulb. What would you use for a vacuum pump? Even if you could evacuate the bulb, how would you keep the adsorbed gasses on the inside walls of the glass bulb from outgassing, and again, destroying the vacuum? How would you seal the wires leading from the filament to the outside of the bulb? Most metals have quite a different coefficient of expansion than does glass. As soon as you heated the bulb, the glass would expand to a greater or a lesser proportion than the wires. In the first case the seal would be broken, in the second case a crack might form in the glass which again, would break the vacuum seal. How would you prevent the filament from evaporating (usually referred to as sputtering) and forming a deposit on the inside of the glass. In short order the glass wall would become opaque, resulting in little light transmission.

Now, obviously there are solutions to each one of the problems I bring up, or we never would have had lightbulbs in the first place. I bring them up to show that even something as simple as an incandescent lightbulb required a vast amount of engineering and problem solving. The solutions were anything but trivial. The apparent simplicity of even a lightbulb is deceiving. BTW, if you could make a success of the lightbulb, doubtless you could make an electronic vacuum tube (British=valve) as well. The design problems are very much related.

Steam Engine

The pot boiler built with the brittle iron available in the Middle Ages would be better suited for making a bomb than a steam engine. Even though the steam working pressures were kept to a minimum (which drastically reduced the efficiency as well), early steam engine explosions killed people by the thousands (Do you remember the gun-camera footage of WW2 Allied fighters during machine-gun attacks on Axis locomotives? When the boiler was pierced by a bullet, the gigantic explosion resulted entirely from the latent energy of the superheated water suddenly escaping into the air...fighter pilots just loved to shoot holes in them). Should you desire to use copper instead of iron, you have to contend with the creep of copper at high temperatures. Another problem is proper piston and valve lubrication. You would need a lubricating oil formulated to remain intact in the presence of steam. A moderately powerful, low pressure, low speed steam engine would require quite a large flywheel. Do you know how to calculate the failure speed of a cast iron flywheel? If not, I would erect a mountain of sandbags around the engine, as bursting flywheels release a tremendous amount of kinetic energy.

Lastly, to make a steam engine requires at least a lathe with an accurate bed and a carriage mounted tool rest. These were not available in the Middle Ages. You would have to make this yourself. Do you know how to chip cast iron to an approximate shape and then finish by scraping? Again I ask, what would you use for cutting tool steel? The folded Damascus blades Adam speaks of hold a nice edge for gutting a human, but if you would try to use this same steel in an engine lathe, the edge would quickly break down under the heat and pressure generated by cutting steel. I keep speaking about metallurgy because I think many of us have forgotten the significance of the discovery of tool steels. Tool steels perhaps were to the 19th century what transistors were to the 20th Century.

I built an O gauge live-steam locomotive for my two nephews nearly 15 years ago. It used an alchohol burner under a silver-soldered copper boiler. Even though the finished engine fit into the palm of my hand, it still required an entire winter of all my free time for the machining of this engine. Also, I followed a set of plans and I didn't have to build my metal lathe. Besides, the end-product was only a toy. The bearings and piston/valve lubrication scheme was sufficient for a toy, but entirely inadequate for providing any useful power.

Again, there are solutions to these 18th and 19th Century problems. I'm playing the devil's advocate by suggesting that even 18th Century techology was not without its subtleties.

Q, I'm not aware of any good sites on the web for learning about the history of technology in the Middle-Ages. The libraries are full of wonderful books on the subject though. The nearest college or university would be your best bet, though any library could get the books via inter-library loan. I've always found the history of technology to be a fascinating subject.

Michael

For some reason, I have been thinking about this for about a year. I know a reliable psychic who says that in 10 to 12 years, for a short time, there will be an economic collapse worldwide that will stop the oil and power in US and people will go back to fending for themselves for about a year until the national guards restore order. Irrespective of the cause, if our supply chain of energy and food gets disrupted, we have to survive on our wits. So, I talked to my neighbors and we are going to set up a system to self-sustain our local communities. That includes, food, medicine, energy etc. I have a set of Foxfire books that will help.

Now, this could be temporary, so we will have available a lot of gadgets and laptops and CD-ROMs etc to access the knowledge base. But suppose there is an asteroid strike that sends mankind back to square-one, how would you store the knowledge so that you or your children can access that knowledge and rebuild the society? There is a TV program called "Jeremiah" in Showtime that depicts life after a biological disaster.

If anyone knows any CDROMs available that teaches how to build stuff with common hardware store tools to sustain an isolated community from supply of goods and services, I would love to know. This topic is not the place, so I am starting another topic - please join me to discuss this issue - at "Surviving Disaster " topic.

Orthogonal, I'm pretty well up on those things, because I've been a big customer of Lindsay Publications (http://www.lindsaybks.com/), which specializes in books about obsolete technologies.

Hey Brett,

Yes, I know Lindsay equally well. He does put out an odd catalog though :)

You might mention him to kmguru. Also, kmguru should know about Real Goods, a company that sells alternate energy supplies (they recently combined with Jade Mountain), as well as Lehman Hardware an outfit that sells homesteading supplies to the Amish. I've been a good customer to both in the past. I'm pretty sure they both have a presence on the WWW

Hmm...I wonder how the Amish manage to buy on-line? I'm envisioning a horse driven computer. :)

Michael

When the Amish say they have a 200 horsepower car, they mean it!. A car's body pulled along by 200 horses...

First I think on the list would be to build a water wheel. The water wheel can have many uses to make power available. The materials at hand are not really much of a problem, other than making sure you use a wood that tolerates water well, such as cypress. Once you have a water wheel you may use the power for all kinds of things, grist mill, wood "power tools", the list is endless on this. Metallurgy is something else. One of the big problems was getting the fire hot enough. Charcoal and billows worked bit you can not develop a hot enough fire to melt metals and give sufficent purity through the process without the heat.

Cordage? Once in the boyscouts I learned how to make rope. We hand wound it. That I could do again today. It would be much easier using modern materails but I could subsistute other materials that would work.

Wire drawing is relativitily easy to accomplish. This gives you a graded wire of roughly uniform size. Nails could be easy made from a stamp and the wire made, provided your power source is from the water wheel. The key to all this is when you "design" a process think about mass producing it. Most everything of olden times was hand produced. And the parts required hand fitting. This meant repair was also a hand process that was time consuming.

The Amish Laptop...
http://www.mystique.net/images/laptop.jpg
Features:
• 13 x 6 Bead Resolution
• 78 RAB (Random Access Bead) Memory
• All wood construction
• Chalk & slate based input
• Holders for slate, chalk, charcoal and stylus
• 1 Chicken Power Supply
• Built-in Modem (see FAQ for more info

<i>I know a reliable psychic who says...</i>

Isn't "reliable psychic" an oxymoron? ;)

Back later. Will think about the original question.

Originally posted by James R


Isn't "reliable psychic" an oxymoron? ;)



So is Military Intelligence. That does not prevent anybody to spend the billions of your tax dollars!....:D

"Technology vs. magic"

Why choose?

i would like to add something to the discussion.

With the materials availible in the time period as i understand them i would be able to build a basic gear driven calculator capible of +,-,*,/ and could refine it as i go. of corse the basic problem with any of the other ideas is the math, you may be able to build a hang glider, but to make it work, and to show them how it works you have to introduce them to some of the basic laws of physics and mathimatics. In this time period in europe an educated man can add and subtract. true scholars in greece and rome would have some geometry and algerbra. so you would have to develope the math first and then the physics second. chemistry would be a whole other story. you would have to id chemicals other ways. things like iron and lead would be easy, but what about salt peter, a basic ingredent for gun powder. you would have to find and id it before the gun you have made would be any good.

to bring high technology to the medieval times, the best bet would bet the steam engine, leading up to the internal combustion engine. for the steam engine you will need a way to refine the metal for the parts. i would recommend thermite. find and melt aluminum to purify it. find or make rust. making rust can be accomplished by mixing salt and water in a clay or glass bowl, adding an electric power source connected to iron. the power source could be made with copper and a strong acid, sulfuric is what is used in acitone car batteries though finding it in those times may be harder, you might try hydrocloric acid which can be collected in the human stomach and boiled to purity in a glass container. one could also generate electricity using natural forming magnets and a few moving parts to create a spinning magnetic field wich is what a generator does. after you have your power source you apply it to your water with the positive connected to the iron, the positive is the one wich will bubble more. leave it overnight or longer depending on the strength of your power. scrape the rust off the bottom, do this for a few nights leaving the shavings in the container, then boil and sun dry the rust, grind it into a fine powder, place it in a pot and heat until red, add in your aluminum and you will soon have thermite. use magniesium to light it. seperate the to metals that form as it burns(through just about every thing), they will be slag and pure iron, the pure iron can then be used to make good parts for a steam engine.

the steam engine is nothing more than a pressure boiler, a heat source, a place for steam to leave, and condence water to enter, and usualy a turbine or something to do work. the internal combustion engine would be harder, but could be produced. it could be made to run off of a strong alchohol, which they had.

there are many more things i could list that could be done in such a time with the material availible. but it would take too long and i don't know what formatt you would want full replies.

Originally posted by Conor
to bring high technology to the medieval times, the best bet would bet the steam engine, leading up to the internal combustion engine. for the steam engine you will need a way to refine the metal for the parts. i would recommend thermite. find and melt aluminum to purify it.

Easier said than done. Monatomic aluminum is vary rare- I don't think they have any aluminum deposits in Europe. Most of it is tied up in bauxite.

then perhaps a more, well in this case less difficult proccess would be to melt down and boil the iorn, either way will produce pure iron.

Iron smelting involves considerably more than setting a very hot fire under iron bearing rock and waiting for the metal to run out. Smelting chemically reduces ferrous oxide--contained in ore in various chemical configurations--into iron (without the oxide), and byproduct carbon mono- and di-oxides. Smelting iron requires balanced quantities of iron ore, oxygen, and carbon being introduced in a controlled, three-stage chemical reduction taking place in the bosh of a blast furnace aided by heat and pressure.

Getting a fire up to 1000-1500 degrees is no easy feat. You can not get it with wood. It requires charcoal and billows. If you get the fire to hot by using the billows, you stand a chance of the iron becoming an oxide with the excess air, which would ruin the iron.

Nobody has answered my qustion yet,
"Technology vs. magic"

Because I can't do magic. That leaves no choice.

i would choose magic, ecept that in that time period, magic wasn't widely accepted and technology if explained would keep you from getting burned at the steak as i understand the rules of the question.

The computer didn't copy the question properly. The real one is:

"Technology vs Magic"
Why choose?

The dynamo. I am sure I could at least IMPRESS them with little electrical discharges....

The steam engine....

Some form of medicine. NO LEECHES...

The bug bomb....


So many things would work great.

Originally posted by Gifted

"Technology vs Magic"
Why choose?

Why indeed....but on the otherhand magic has that "deception" built in to it, that may come handy against people who are telepathic and have pure thought....

I was drifting into fantasy. The point I was getting at is that, given the right physics, you can integrate magic and technology. Primitive examples are magic swords and other such weapons. Let's cross Harry Potter and Star Trek.:eek: Any thoughts?

The common meaning of magic is "deception", but if we use science to actually do it - then it is a whole different issue. Some stuff can be done, while others are problematic such as making statue of liberty disappear...

If we want to really do that, then we may borrow a technology from StarTrek and beam it up somewhere, we could put a temporal bubble around it, we could manipulate light around it and so on. The point is, one could physically remove the object from a specific space-time reference or make it appear so. Since there may be many methods to make it look like magic - one should be careful to disect the science/technology behind such effects.

Ultimately all things are possible if we are a part of a simulation in the great cosmic computer....

Yes, the mice are watching...:D I refer to magic as a supernatural non-psychic mechanism to manipulate the real world. Belgarath. Gandalf. Fizban.:D Harry Potter.

Real magic is just science you can not yet comprehend. What you were calling magic is slight-of-hand.

I was not refering to slieght of hand.

the question on a slightly different line....

can we sciforumers rebuild society from scratch? what are our talents and areas of expertise? can we get shit up and running?

(there was a stephen king novel that went along these lines too. however his world already had modern infrastructure in place and just needed people to operate and maintain them)



anyway i am afraid i have zero skils

:(

Technology in the Middle Ages (http://www.mastep.sjsu.edu/history_of_tech/middle.htm)

timeline (http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/Timeline.html)

Medieval Science (http://members.aol.com/mcnelis/medsci_index.html)

google (http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&newwindow=1&safe=off&as_qdr=all&q=medieval+technology)

there is a big difference between magic, science, sliet of hand, and illusion. illusion is based on plinciples of misdirection like sliet of hand, but on a muck grander scale. it also blends in aspecks of science particulary physics. science itself is just physics with math to proove it. you can manipulate energy with science, but it is limited. magic is the use of your inner energy or the energy of the world and/or cosmos, to manipulate reality in an almost limitless manner. magic is only really limited to the users imagination and faith.

Show any hint of technology in the wrong era and you would be burned at the stake.

Notwithstanding a proper explanation ? :confused:

Copper is a common metal, even in medieval times. It seems that one could devise a simple means of making wire.... from that point electical generators and basic circuitry are simple matter...you could then build an electric chair and impress the hell out of the Inquisition, and add an entire new chapter to the art of medieval torture......

that would require magnets to generate the electricity. natural magnets are weak, and were held as magical with little hope of convincing even the smartest of scholors otherwise.as for circutry, you would have to have detailed knowledge of the inner workings of resisters, compacitors...ect...

The interesting part might be the impact of the ideas you took back with you.
Sophisticated technology might be tough to do without a supporting infrastructure, but it would be interesting to give them cheeseburgers, politics (as separate from religion)
advertising etc.
I wonder how "we shall overcome" would go over in the 14th century :)

Take "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" to the thirties.:D

I only just found this..

orthogonal
Occasionally I play this mind game; I imagine that I've returned to Europe in the Middle Ages wearing only my "birthday suit." My task is to single-handedly introduce my ancestors to modern technology using only the information I carry in my head.

I've been thinking about this kind of thing and reckon it would make a great reality program... Some kind of 'civilisation' game show to see how far you could advance in a period of time.

given carbon, vinegar, copper i could make a loudspeaker

I wouldn't think that will ever be possible for that would upset the time lines for everyone and everything.

Personally I would invent paper and the printing press followed by a new number system to replace roman numerals. But I would base it around Dozens instead of tens! It’s got to be better. :)

I might also use magic tricks to fool people into thinking I’m a prophet and then invent my own religion. That’s where the money is! :D

Of course I could build an electric generator and demonstrate lightning, but they would probably burn me as a witch :(

*sigh*
A whole year late but for what its worth- WONDERFUL thread.

Let us see...what would Gendanken do?

Given only the environment and my bare hands, walk up to the first cedar tree and strip off some bark. What I need know is gum, sugar and potassium chlorate. Gum I can easily milk off that tree, sugar Im sure some village idiot can fetch, but the potassium chlorate. Where? I'm no chemist, but seeing how this is a simple chemical I'm sure there's some way I could find some from natural resources (disclaimer: gendanken is allowed a crash course in chemistry the night before she's zipped back in time.)

All I need now is a bottle (glass blowing is an ancient art, so the villagers have glass bottles). Enter sulfuric acid- found in any dark cave with standing water.
Taking the gum, sugar, and potassium chlorate mixture I coat the piece of cedar with it and then dip the stick in the bottle. I take it out and its contact with air (oxygen) goes VOILA- fire. My cedar stick has burst into flames.

Magic.

Can-and-string telephone - not too hard with a pair of drums - make relatively long-distance communication.

Optics - Galileo's discoveries could have been made centuries earlier, if everybody already had glass.

Bulletproof Vests - layered silk would stop bullet penetration just as well in medieval times as it does now

Telegraph - large quantities of refined metal like copper were hard to get, but in those days instantaneous communication would have been priceless. Naturally-occurring magnets might not have been strong enough. Also, possibly too weird for the locals.

Smokeless powder - the alchemists knew how to make nitric acid (it was an ingredient in Aqua Regia), and nitric acid and cellulose (like linen) combine to make guncotton - superior to gunpowder in energy potential, and also relatively smokeless so your gunners can see better.

Most highly pressurized technologies like steam engines and ICE's were not possible with the very poor metallurgy of the time.

Alloying of nickel and iron makes stainless steel, but the temperatures required would probably be higher than were possible with the resources available.

Coke - coal with the coal gas driven out of it - would fire at a higher temperature and thus be useful. Coal gas would also be useful but dangerous and difficult to store.

The movable type printing press is not as easy to "reinvent" as it appears - the technology involved was actually fairly complicated for the time... making movable type that will print without squashing the letters was a bit of a trick.

An understanding of Mendelian inheritance and transmission genetics would probably aid greatly in animal and plant breeding.

Cowpox inoculations could have eradicated smallpox. (Before the Spanish went to Central America... the world would be a very different place.)

a bullet proof wouldnt work that well against a crossbow, i know for a fact that you can stab through a vest, the only reason it stops bullets is beacuse they are so tiny.

what would be really easy is the missile, and while im at it why not a plane

If you would travel back in time, you could help to work up a bit of the time the church has so lavishly wasted.

I think I would build a car. It´s not that hard, alas I would need to equipp it with a steam engine at the beginning...
And I would build me a rifle to keep those nutters who want to burn me away. :D A tank would also be neat...

And the I would just further their technological development after I have convinced them that I am no magician.

Greetings and Felicitations,

It depends on when I was dropped off. The Middle Ages covers a pretty good time frame. However:

Build myself a still and introduce the local warlord the the most potent Grog I could make. Fractional distillation was easy to do with common equipment. Once I was in his good graces as Court Alchemist (which was perfectly ok) I would proceed. Introduce local blacksmith to folding metal. Introduce local warlord to gunpowder and breech-loaded weapons. Introduce local warlord to using pure alchohol to fight infection and for use as a weapon. Teach them to boil water to kill infection (appropriately disguised as getting all the devils out). Ah, the list proceeds. Considering I would know how to keep myself healthy better than anyone else I wait until the warlord gets old (about 30 or so) kill him off and take over the world.

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

I don't know enough about metallurgy, chemisty or mechanics to build anything. What is interesting, however, is that many claim it would be "easy" to build a car, steam engine, etc.

However, it'd be near impossible. If you're in the middle ages, then your materials suck. Try making nuts and bolts and screws out of iron. Since your screws would be made out of the same stuff your boiler tank is, your steam engine would tear apart at the seams.

Distillation (assuming this is pre-alchemy) and preventing infection would be the best I could do. And possibly building hot air ballons, and optics.

For anyone who has actually worked with their hands on something, they'd know how hard it is to build something. You'd have to know how to use medieval tools. This is the age before synthetic glue and duct tape....

I think our best bet would be to apprentice with an alchemist, blacksmith or chemist, to learn how to use medieval tools. Then we could try "standing on the shoulders of giants." Otherwise, I think we'd all end up growing stuff as a serf.

maybe with a medical degree you could do something

Hey Orthoganal,
I've played this game myself once or twice.
Could you qualify the year and place.
There is an important 500 years involved and Europe is a big place.
Also, No one has mentioned the enormous language barrier.
Anyone still speak or write latin? or whatever the local language you would find yourself in. Customs? Etc..
Conceeding that somehow I could communicate with anyone and didn't piss off/scare the local population, how could I get an audience with someone in power?

I suppose I would have to steal some clothes from a yokel straight away.
Then steal enough equipment and supplies to survive, and leave the district,for a large city. I would acquire charcoal,salt peter,and sulpher from an apothacary and mix a bit up a bit of gunpowder and build alot of frag grenades.
This should endear me to the local power structure, then I would improve their armies drill and weaponary(everybody gets a crossbow!,building them if early middle age) Become a great general(using superior strategy and tactics)and unify that nation by force of arms and become their King. I would improve the agriculture methods to feed my new nation and would make sure to be buddies with the pope(to influence his positions on my upcoming renaissance). Then create Universities and promote literacy. I would introduce the factory, assembly line, and unify a code of law(promoting human rights).

I could take over the world at this point(I know its round and quite alot of the geopolitics of the era) but i don't. Instead, I would control world trade. I would contact africa,austrailia,and america,and warn them of future european evils.(probably saying something like kill all white folk.) and give them gunpowder and advanced blacksmithing knowledge, as well as a ton of european diseases so they will have immunities in the upcoming generations.

If I didn't become very powerful fast,I would be killed and could not implement an early renaissance. Rember in this age only the powerful could do anything, the rest did what the powerful said.

I might change my mind and unify christendom, then make them more tolerant, and send these tolerant missionaries to the east getting a foothold on asian hearts and minds 100's of years ahead o schedule.

Well well well, where to begin. Have i mentioned I do medieval reenacting and am at home with sword or bill? (i can even shoot arrows in a straight line.)

Firstly, with a few years work i could get together stuff that would be pretty party pieces. Eg electric shock machine, fireworks, a glider etc.
Anyone know what material the Montgolfier fils used for their ballon fabric? I think an observation balloon would be a treat.
They did have coal then, but to use it youd have to rememebr decent mining techniques. From the coal you could get coal gas, which would be useful for high temp work. Bellows and charcoal get you up to 100 no real problems, except that of fuel.
How about amber and cat fur for static electricity? I am sure i could knock up a van der graff generator somehow. Batteris would be a piece of cake, rememebr they used lead on roofs then, and alchemists could prepare sulphuric acid, although identifying it as such would be trickier. Copper was also around then, so with some careful winding work, and a few lodestones, i think you could perhaps get some sort of generator going.
Certainly, as regards the industry thing, introducing the jaquard loom 200 years earlier would give you a corner on the cloth inndustry. Add that to water powered forging hammer, which use a cunning but very simple mechanism to beat out steal, along with research encouraged along the lines towards better steel production, such as the pre bessemer techniques in making crucible steel etc.
And merely folding metal isnt enough, it has to be the right metal. We dont need to do the old katana stuff nowadays, (the vikings and saxons were doing it before the japanese) because it was done in order to 1) distriibute and hammer out the muck in the poor quality materials, and 2) to marry the qualities of two different types of steel, ie the brittle and the malleable. A katanas edge is hardened by plunging it into water or suchlike, from something like 800 degrees C. The back is protected by clay, preventing it from being so treated, and thus retaining its malleability. Hence you sometimes see samuria blocking each other with the backs of their blades.

Optics- there is convincing evidence that the "ancients" ie greeks and Egyptians knew about optics. But it was eitehr sacred or a useful power mongering tool, so kept secret. All you need are some lumps of good rock crystal and lots of time, and hey presto, a telescope.

insanely elite, your plan is somewhat optimistic. there were reasons not everyone in the armies had crossbows, such as cost, fear of peasant uprising, given a crossbow armed person can kill an armoured knight. Then frag grenades are not very good either, most people on the battlefield would be wearing armour and you'd have to get past the archers fire first. And the Chinese had crossbows over 1,000 years ago.
Gendanken, glass blowing isnt that anceint an art, they didnt really have glass bottles in europe much until the 13/ 14th century. Glass was fragile and expensive. It took a lot of wood to keep a glass furnace going, and they hadnt developed most of the necessary techniques back then. It was more the 16th century things really took off. So you would be most likely to find glass bottles in a few noblemans places.

The way to get potassium nitrate for gunpowder is to get lots of horse dung, in a barrell, get lots of men to piss into it, mix it all up, work it, and then you drain things off and dry some of it, I forget the exact details. Suffice it to say its not an exact science.

Big blue head- the mongols had silk padded jackets. They were very good for pulling arrows out of injuries, the silk going in with the arrow but also pulling out with it.

I second also the loudspeaker thing. I dont know how good the paper technology was for the cone though.

HHmm, capacitors? Sheets of mica as dielectric? I cant remember all my physics.

The main problem with everyones schemes is that they assume nearly unlimited money and lots of spare time and willing helpers. Technology is also dependent upon the time it is in. The bicycle was about for a while before it was capable of being utilised properly. One of the greeks demonstrated some sort of sphere that turned by water inside being heated and turned to steam and escaping through two vents, but it took 2,000 years to get steam engines. Its the same problem with impriving the metallurgy, not only do you need vast anounts of consumables such as coke, you also need the pick of iron. Sheffield when it was huge back in the 19th century was actually importing most of its iron ore from sweden. So transporting said ore costs money, especially in the medieval period. Distilling things requires a good potter and a good glassblower, both rare creatures. Making the required acids actually requries several different starting materials, a fire, and various vessels, and a knowledge of what hte starting materials look like and how to use them.
Ultimately, if i was put back to teh 14th century europe, assuming i managed not to incur anyones wrath, I think i could lay the foundations for the rennaisance and industrial revolution 200 years earlier. But i wouldnt actually accomplish much science or magic, it would more involve introducing as much as i could remember, in order to increase production and concentrate enough money to be able to get a university or two going, and fund research of various kinds. The main thing is to reorient peoples minds, which lets face it is too large a task for one person.

i just found a loophole: you said we arent wearing anything so that means we can still shove stuff up our asses

I cannot think of any piece of modern technology I could reproduce. I wish it was different. I think I will try to learn how to produce electric light from scratch. Seems doable and usefull too...

To produce electric light from scratch - what you have to do? List please....