I like this one most because it captures multiple technologies in one. The flash would show how we have been able to produce light, and the camera aspect shows how we can capture light and then produce a tangible picture of what they just experienced. I feel like they would understand and appreciate this one the most.
If you download the right apps/media, you have a flashlight, music player, eReader, encyclopedia, calculator, video player, camera, translator, scanner, and more. I think it would still be the right choice. Just need to bring a solar+crank charger.
A flashlight. Some of our technology requires too much context they wouldn't have to fully appreciate. But they would instantly understand the utility of a flashlight.
Came here to say this. One of the emergency crank or shake powered ones so it doesn't have a limited use due to batteries dying. I had one you could shake to recharge the batteries as a kid. The case was clear so you could see how it worked.
Just going to serious mode for a second... If anyone is travelling in modern day earth to somewhere with limited Internet access (e.g. North Korea, parts of rural Africa) the KIWIX project
A spice rack... a spice rack. I don't even own a spice, let alone many spices that would necessitate an entire rack. What am I gonna do... with a spice rack?
That's always my go to invention if I was ever thrown back in time, even 2000+ years. As long as the society can do basic metal working, I could probably instruct someone to make a simple bike.
damn this is a really good idea since making reverse engineering out of it would be possible for almost anyone willing to do it. ant it would be extremely usefull to move arround.
I seriously wonder if even Newton, one of the greatest geniuses in history, would accept quantum mechanics. He wouldn't have the equipment to perform the experiments that Einstein, Rutheford, Planck, and all the others from the turn of the 20th century needed to prove the theory, and without the results, it would seem like complete hokum.
A bicycle — not likely to get me burned at the stake for witchcraft, doesn’t require electricity, and I bet people would be stoked about it. People would think I’m a mechanical genius!
Full blown professional demon costume. I’m talking high class shit. And then some of those wireless led lights to put in the masks eye sockets so when I turn on the leds, it’ll make my eyes glow
Antibiotic resistance sets in by the 18th century, billions die. Hope you also gave them a microbiology textbook cause they won't have any tools to address that problem.
This is just a season of Outlander. The character traveled back to revolutionary times as a 1960s doctor. She took hundreds of pieces of bread and let them mold until she finds the right type of mold and lets that type grow by continuing to feed it. Penicillin. She already knows what Penicillin looks like under a microscope and they have microscopes in the 1700s.
I'd write down every major historical event for a few years in a notebook. I'd call it "The Bible 2". I'd spread rumors about its predictions before they happened. I'd give the book to a random person. In the book I would give an exact time and place of the second coming of Jesus.
This is a stupid answer, but… I would first investigate one town or village that’s particularly well documented. Then I would come back in time with pictures of them, and information about their families for me.
No one said you couldn't go to a place in Africa! Blow their minds and radically change the course of history giving awesome knowledge or tech before Europe or the Americas have access to it :)
I feel like anything that truly blows people's minds will also get you killed. I think you'd have to pick an example that is far enough ahead of their technology, but probably not computer age.
I think people were a lot smarter in the past than we give them credit for. Some people might think things are magic or demonic, but a lot of people would recognize it was technology, even if they didn’t know how it worked. Imagine someone came from the far future with tech we can’t imagine. At worst we’d assume they’re an alien 😂
Depends on who you show it to. You show a smart phone to Ben Franklin and tell him that his experiments involving electricity were critical in its development, and the guy would probably lose his shit in a good way that his work helped create something like this.
Wait wait, everyone hear her out on this one… What kind of pants are we talking here? Cause I’ve always had the theory jeans or yoga pants could cause world peace if worn in the right time period. 🤔
a Philippino friend told me that there is a type of fish that sailors way back would use as pocket pussy as long as it's kept alive it can be reused or simply used and released. and i read a historical story about a melon merchant that got a bad patch that couldn't sell so he sold it for cheap as a pocket pussy. i think what you will take back would be better but it won't be revolutionary
Early electrical components used insulators made of cloth and gutta-percha, but high power electrical components are really difficult to make without polymer insulation derived from petroleum. It would be rather difficult to industrialize at all without cheap energy to start. It takes a lot of energy to make a power grid- simply melting enough ore to make the copper is a big challenge, to say nothing of the necessity of roads and railroads. It is perfectly realistic to imagine a renewable powered civilization in the near future, but building one from scratch would be a challenge.
This would be harder than you think. People of this time had to work very hard to survive. They might be the most impressed with a truck or tractor because the demonstrable utility would be in line with the necessary toil of survival
Non-dip fountain pens were quite the social revolution in the very late 1800s. People indeed would be interested in good pens. Early lead pencils were in use as far back as the 1500s.
A few books with the know how to create inventions that can be made in the time period's technological age and obtainable resources, to further spur advancements. And patent that stuff with laws protecting it from privatisation. It would cover some medical texts, mechanical/electrical and engineering
I feel like this question is geared to a certain race/location. Like 1700s Europe or European colonies. But it would be amazing to see India, or Tibet, or Kenya, or Australia… can you imagine the wildlife you’d see? Oceans full of fish and whales and zero plastic pollution! The people of the world would have no idea of the air pollution coming, nor of the obscene threat of nuclear annihilation! But there was so much evil then, too, like legal slavery. I’d take a collection of videos that outline the coming events and hope they’d look for ways to do it better.
Not really responding to the question but do you imagine how much peoples from the past would freak out seeing some high-end technology like an helicopter, a fighter jet or just a plane, an automatic rifle or just a car ? It would be very intersting seeing that if it could happen.
Single most comprehensive textbook of each of the major STEM disciplines. Bring them straight to the best university I can reach. See how fast it takes for them to accelerate scientific progress.
A laser pointer.
Get ‘em to chase it around.
The cats of the past appoint you as their God.
Lol, I have reason to belive a single cool white Led and a battery could make you an angel to anyone 🤣
My time machine
Only if they could see it!
A Polaroid camera.
Take people's pictures and claim you are stealing their souls
He has the right idea.
I like this one most because it captures multiple technologies in one. The flash would show how we have been able to produce light, and the camera aspect shows how we can capture light and then produce a tangible picture of what they just experienced. I feel like they would understand and appreciate this one the most.
I was going to say my mobile phone but then who am I going to call? I suppose I could blow their minds with some Candy Crush.
Are you that good???
If you download the right apps/media, you have a flashlight, music player, eReader, encyclopedia, calculator, video player, camera, translator, scanner, and more. I think it would still be the right choice. Just need to bring a solar+crank charger.
Pictures and videos would be enough lol
Hope the WiFi signal is strong enough for ya
Until the battery died
A flashlight. Some of our technology requires too much context they wouldn't have to fully appreciate. But they would instantly understand the utility of a flashlight.
Makes sense
Came here to say this. One of the emergency crank or shake powered ones so it doesn't have a limited use due to batteries dying. I had one you could shake to recharge the batteries as a kid. The case was clear so you could see how it worked.
Take your smartphone with the whole Wikipedia downloaded. Become Nostradamus.
Wikipedia and a solar power charger. That would be enough to change the world.
And I would still get information wrong. You can call me Nostradumbass.
Just going to serious mode for a second... If anyone is travelling in modern day earth to somewhere with limited Internet access (e.g. North Korea, parts of rural Africa) the KIWIX project
I hardly see how Quasimodo is gonna blow their mind.
Some guy happened to make a joke edit to the page for cars, saying they run on semen, seconds before you downloaded it.
My spice rack.
I would not advertise it too much. The dutch will find you and take it.
It's all fun and jokes till' the British colonize your ass.
Ore-ga-no? What the hell?
I prefer the spiceps
A spice rack... a spice rack. I don't even own a spice, let alone many spices that would necessitate an entire rack. What am I gonna do... with a spice rack?
Season their food, they always just eat bread and some unseasonably meat anyway.
The bicycle, one of the most simple but amazing inventions.
That's always my go to invention if I was ever thrown back in time, even 2000+ years. As long as the society can do basic metal working, I could probably instruct someone to make a simple bike.
This is really good. Complex enough to blow everyone's minds. Simple enough to not be witchcraft, and very useful.
damn this is a really good idea since making reverse engineering out of it would be possible for almost anyone willing to do it. ant it would be extremely usefull to move arround.
I'd bring a modern college physics textbook to Issac Newton. He was already blowing the minds of everyone there but I'd just ramp that up to 11.
Gets to the Newtonian chapter and the book implodes in the time version of a black hole
He then becomes the largest arms dealer in the world after he reads up on splitting the atom.
Very nice.
He'd probably be very pissed off to see that it is Leibniz' notation and concept descriptions that are now used instead of his.
I seriously wonder if even Newton, one of the greatest geniuses in history, would accept quantum mechanics. He wouldn't have the equipment to perform the experiments that Einstein, Rutheford, Planck, and all the others from the turn of the 20th century needed to prove the theory, and without the results, it would seem like complete hokum.
first, i would share with him a handwritten copy of Principia Mathematica because it covers everything post-Newton.
The old taking of your thumb trick
"Hey! HE STOLE MY THUMB!!! GET HIM!"
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There were plenty of scientists and inventors that were playing around with that concept, this would get their attention
A bicycle — not likely to get me burned at the stake for witchcraft, doesn’t require electricity, and I bet people would be stoked about it. People would think I’m a mechanical genius!
I’m curious how difficult it would be to replicate a crude bicycle with their materials. I think the most difficult part would be making tires.
A furbie lol
Jesus christ are you trying to scare them?!
Probably an electric guitar and amp. Start shredding
Bring a generator too
That’s like the scene in Back to the Future
But what are you gonna plug it into?
So basically doctor who
Hell yeah!
Full blown professional demon costume. I’m talking high class shit. And then some of those wireless led lights to put in the masks eye sockets so when I turn on the leds, it’ll make my eyes glow
They'll probably catch you in a group and have you on witch trials
I bring back a disposable lighter and I hold it up and go BEHOLD in my hand I hold fire!
"BURN THE WITCH!"
But we have fire...
Ballpoint pen.
I was going to say pen! It’s not such a leap that they wouldn’t understand. But maybe I’ll up it by bringing glitter gel pens.
Penicillin. Might as well save some lives while blowing their minds
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Antibiotic resistance sets in by the 18th century, billions die. Hope you also gave them a microbiology textbook cause they won't have any tools to address that problem.
This is just a season of Outlander. The character traveled back to revolutionary times as a 1960s doctor. She took hundreds of pieces of bread and let them mold until she finds the right type of mold and lets that type grow by continuing to feed it. Penicillin. She already knows what Penicillin looks like under a microscope and they have microscopes in the 1700s.
Women's pants.
With or without pockets?
I'd write down every major historical event for a few years in a notebook. I'd call it "The Bible 2". I'd spread rumors about its predictions before they happened. I'd give the book to a random person. In the book I would give an exact time and place of the second coming of Jesus.
Very nice.
Cool... Wait,
What if you predicting the events caused them to not happen tho
I feel like you’ve put some thought into this.
blowing their minds too hard might get you accused of witchcraft, so be careful
Tbf if I go back in time 300 years to do anything I’d consider myself a wizard of sorts so they’ve be kind of right
Witch-burning was pretty much out of vogue by 1700.
As a female, I would be burned at the stake or tied to stone and thrown in a river. Going to take a hard pass on this one.
Modern strength marijuana.
For me its the other way around
If you brought them back, wouldn't they just be a few years old according to carbon dating and be seen as frauds?
A synthesiser, amp and power supply, which I present as a gift to Bach and proceed to have my own mind blown along with everyone else's.
I actually think about this a lot.
Big ass cubic zirconia. How would they know?
Those little capsules that expand into dinosaur shaped sponges and drugs.
They didn’t even know what a dinosaur was until the 1820s
Dinosaur shaped drugs
As soon you arrive, you will wipe half the population with your germs
Or you'll die from theirs.
Yeah.
I'm a Chinese guy that's 6'3"
Could you manage having 100 Chinese wives?
This is a stupid answer, but… I would first investigate one town or village that’s particularly well documented. Then I would come back in time with pictures of them, and information about their families for me.
"Kill him!"
Come back just before an eclipse and you're set for life
Fighter jet
Good luck operating that thing with no runways and like a day worth of fuel, lol
Water filtration devices
Now you have to explain germ theory to them
"Hey guys! You can finally have clean water without properly purifying it!"
A bunch of viruses I’m immune to and they aren’t.
Ooh! Cheeky AND sneaky mass murder 👌
One of those inflatable dudes they got in front of car dealerships
Wacky waving inflatable tube man.
All those card tricks I learned in middle school will finally pay off
books! lots of books!
From where and when?
As a black man, no thanks I'm good in this era
No one said you couldn't go to a place in Africa! Blow their minds and radically change the course of history giving awesome knowledge or tech before Europe or the Americas have access to it :)
Roll up Monticello and blow Jefferson’s mind by being a free black man with an education and paying job.
Can I take my house. Primarily for the running water since electricity won’t work. Proper plumbing and sanitation will do them wonders.
Bonus points for killing the local wicked witch on landing when you travel by house.
If you're assuming that the electrical infrastructure doesn't travel with you I don't know why you'd think that water infrastructure would.
Just a super bright flashlight
One of my old profs said the one item he'd bring: a Sunday edition of the New York Times.
Still true to this day. Seeing how schools in the US are funded I see the same logic.
I feel like anything that truly blows people's minds will also get you killed. I think you'd have to pick an example that is far enough ahead of their technology, but probably not computer age.
I think people were a lot smarter in the past than we give them credit for. Some people might think things are magic or demonic, but a lot of people would recognize it was technology, even if they didn’t know how it worked. Imagine someone came from the far future with tech we can’t imagine. At worst we’d assume they’re an alien 😂
Like a bullet proof vest. That would make sense because they know about armor, and I think had muskets by then.
Depends on who you show it to. You show a smart phone to Ben Franklin and tell him that his experiments involving electricity were critical in its development, and the guy would probably lose his shit in a good way that his work helped create something like this.
Nachos.
Honestly, you'd just need to show up in today's clothing
I’ve always wondered how people back them would react to today’s clothing
yeah let alone the materials the quality of even the shittiest clothing today is far above what they could make at the time.
A picture of the earth taken from the surface of the moon.
"Floating earth theory? That's so stupid!"
Lots and lots of chocolate.
Nice.
A single wheel, when I prove that I am actually from the future they will be blown away that I am stupid enough to think a wheel is something new.
An NFT, it'll blow their minds how fucking stupid the future is.
"So you own this picture of a....monkey?"
A tablet and a Bluetooth speaker. I understand how Bluetooth works and it still seems like magic to my ape brain.
So you aren't gonna be the only one mind blown huh?
sour skittles. one is enough to completely disintegrate a man from that time period.
A roll of aluminum foil. Aluminum was a precious commodity until the late 1800s and it wasn't even isolated in a pure form until the early 1800s.
True, in fact the capitol building in Washington was built with a dome covered in aluminium foil to show how modern and rich the new country was.
A modern rifle. That is going to blow a lot of minds, litterally.
cant get accused of witchcraft if they cant arrest you
me, a woman, wearing pants
Insta burned at the stake
Wait wait, everyone hear her out on this one… What kind of pants are we talking here? Cause I’ve always had the theory jeans or yoga pants could cause world peace if worn in the right time period. 🤔
You will be called a witch.
Motorbike, just whiz around on the thing making an horrendous racket.
Pre-workout. Ima sell it for increibly high prices and call it the hyperspeed juice
A lighter
Put it behind your hand and light it..
A selection of really powerful chilli seeds and also some stonkingly powerful modern weed strains.
"I say, this is much stronger than the Hemp old Washington's been growing." What do you call it my boy?"
Pocket pussy.
Are you going to share or just make them watch?
Simple and disturbing, nice.
a Philippino friend told me that there is a type of fish that sailors way back would use as pocket pussy as long as it's kept alive it can be reused or simply used and released. and i read a historical story about a melon merchant that got a bad patch that couldn't sell so he sold it for cheap as a pocket pussy. i think what you will take back would be better but it won't be revolutionary
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That won't last long...
Whoa brother. They can only take so much.
A sheet of lysergic acid
Plans for wind energy generators - imagine if we were never addicted to fossil fuels.
Would love to read alternate history stories based on that premise !
Early electrical components used insulators made of cloth and gutta-percha, but high power electrical components are really difficult to make without polymer insulation derived from petroleum. It would be rather difficult to industrialize at all without cheap energy to start. It takes a lot of energy to make a power grid- simply melting enough ore to make the copper is a big challenge, to say nothing of the necessity of roads and railroads. It is perfectly realistic to imagine a renewable powered civilization in the near future, but building one from scratch would be a challenge.
Probably a lot of bacteria they can't handle.
Bath salts. It has nothing to do with whatever you’re saying I’m just addicted to bath salts so I’m definitely bringing that
A $25 soccer ball from Walmart. They will be amazed with my juggling skills.
Dadadadada!
This would be harder than you think. People of this time had to work very hard to survive. They might be the most impressed with a truck or tractor because the demonstrable utility would be in line with the necessary toil of survival
A pen and a lead pencil. Priceless, non magical and highly valuable.
Non-dip fountain pens were quite the social revolution in the very late 1800s. People indeed would be interested in good pens. Early lead pencils were in use as far back as the 1500s.
Yes..
A bop it
Twist it!
A few books with the know how to create inventions that can be made in the time period's technological age and obtainable resources, to further spur advancements. And patent that stuff with laws protecting it from privatisation. It would cover some medical texts, mechanical/electrical and engineering
Accidentally bring The Anarchists' Cookbook.
I feel like this question is geared to a certain race/location. Like 1700s Europe or European colonies. But it would be amazing to see India, or Tibet, or Kenya, or Australia… can you imagine the wildlife you’d see? Oceans full of fish and whales and zero plastic pollution! The people of the world would have no idea of the air pollution coming, nor of the obscene threat of nuclear annihilation! But there was so much evil then, too, like legal slavery. I’d take a collection of videos that outline the coming events and hope they’d look for ways to do it better.
Australia’s wildlife was already pretty depleted by the 1700s. But the likes of the Great Barrier Reef would’ve been even more spectacular.
Not really responding to the question but do you imagine how much peoples from the past would freak out seeing some high-end technology like an helicopter, a fighter jet or just a plane, an automatic rifle or just a car ? It would be very intersting seeing that if it could happen.
A pack of multicolored ballpoint click pens.
An airplane
Single most comprehensive textbook of each of the major STEM disciplines. Bring them straight to the best university I can reach. See how fast it takes for them to accelerate scientific progress.
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Plague gun
Plasma ball.
A bunch of those hidden 3D image fractal posters. And maybe some Halloween transforming monster portraits.
Tomatoes. Seriously it wasn't till Thomas Jefferson that tomatoes were considered safe to eat so all I gotta do is eat one before him
The tomatoes themselves wouldn't blow their minds, because Europeans had been growing them since at least the 1540s albeit for ornamental purposes.
This silly myth is so easily debunked. One of the weirdest of American tall tales.
A slinky.
Fidgety and fun!
Cybertruck.
A tampon.
I would bring a bouncy ball. Imagine George Washington seeing a bouncy ball for the first time. I think that would be pretty funny.
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But they killed Jesus
Amazing!
Ibuprofen. Let me become the richest woman in the 1700s because i have a cure all for headaches, fever and joint pain
A flat earther to be laughed at.
Just me. An African who understands physics and can quote Shakespeare would definitely blow their minds.
Yeah you're definitely getting burned at the stake