Useful Information to have in the Past

[abyssmal_kismet]

I'm making this thread to gather any information people think would be useful to have if one were to have a time machine and go to the past. Let's see how much info we can gather.

 

[Dreadis]

Lottery Numbers /thread

 

[Plotvitalnpc]

Stock trends, knowledge that Enron's going to crash, the knowledge that boiling water is what makes it safe to drink, not making it into beer or tea, and that milk keeps longer if ALMOST boiled (heat pasteurization).

 

[pepperjack]

I'm just gonna go ahead and get this one out of the way.

Spoiler: Let's say you've gone back in time

 

[tarrangar]

I'm making this thread to gather any information people think would be useful to have if one were to have a time machine and go to the past. Let's see how much info we can gather.

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If far enough back, Gun powder recipes.
How to make a simple small airship balloon or whatever that's called.
How to make a simple Revolver, being able to shoot multiple times are hella useful, and I'm quite sure the first revolvers was made in a standart smithy.
How to forge steel mainly the fact that you need bellows.
that scurvy are caused by lack of greens.
Modern farming methods.
How to find Copper tin and Iron in nature you might just arrive before metal smithing is discovered.
How to identify good clay and that baking it in the middle of a fire make it stronger and able to hold water without getting any mud in it.
how to build an Atticus.
That lead is a slow poison and as such shouldn't come in contact with any food.

 

[Raron]

How to make penicilin using a crude coal filter. It's still extremely complex but it's probably the only way to make it in medieval ages.
Rubbix cube, that thing could sell for a fortune.
How to make genetic modifications using crossbreeding.

 

[Plotvitalnpc]

Here's one!
Modern beehive designs.
It's only been in the past few hundred years that we've developed beehives for apiculture that DON'T require that the hive be irreversibly destroyed to harvest the honey. This is incredibly suboptimal, from a 'producing a strong, reliable supply of honey' standpoint, because you can't harvest honey from all of your hives since you need one at least to recreate the others, and because reestablishing a hive is losing time, and time is honey.

Honey being the spoilage resistant wonderfood that it is, having more is a very good thing.

 

[The Unicorn]

I'm making this thread to gather any information people think would be useful to have if one were to have a time machine and go to the past. Let's see how much info we can gather.

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A big question is when and where you end up. Information that would be very useful in 1600 CE London would be useless if you found yourself in California in the same time period, or in 700 CE and vice versa. Also are we talking about information to improve society, or to make yourself rich? The cradle scythe and wash board would be incredibly useful to society any point from the stone age till they were actually invented - but they're too easy to make so you wouldn't be getting rich off them.

One thing you could use to get very rich off of is electroplating - all you really need to start is a battery and a bucket of saltwater.

Something that isn't very useful on its own but would be essential if you were going to work any sort of chemistry in middle ages or early modern period is the alchemical names for materials.

I'm just gonna go ahead and get this one out of the way.

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Nope, except for the heat pasteurization line there's nothing useful there.

If far enough back, Gun powder recipes.
How to make a simple small airship balloon or whatever that's called.
How to make a simple Revolver, being able to shoot multiple times are hella useful, and I'm quite sure the first revolvers was made in a standart smithy.
How to forge steel mainly the fact that you need bellows.

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All of these are things that require a lot of highly skilled work, and material to actually pull off even if you have detailed step by step instructions.

Modern farming methods.

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Do you mean crop rotation? Or something else.

How to find Copper tin and Iron in nature you might just arrive before metal smithing is discovered.

How to identify good clay and that baking it in the middle of a fire make it stronger and able to hold water without getting any mud in it.

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If you're that far back you'd need to have some other information and skills to allow you to convince the locals to support you, because I don't think you'd be able to get anything useful from these if you needed to also support yourself in a stone age society.

how to build an Atticus.

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Atticus doesn't appear to refer to anything you can build.

Here's one!
Modern beehive designs.

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Very good point.

 

[tarrangar]

All of these are things that require a lot of highly skilled work, and material to actually pull off even if you have detailed step by step instructions..

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I know they require a lot of skilled work but they can be very useful long term depending on the era, for example with blueprints I'm rather sure the Romans could pull of a warm air balloon, and that's extremely useful for scouting at the very least.

Do you mean crop rotation? Or something else.

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I mean crop rotation and any other information about farming that could be useful I don't know much of farming so I cant think of more but any information that don't rely on machines to help farm would be useful.

 

[The Unicorn]

I know they require a lot of skilled work but they can be very useful long term depending on the era,

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True, the point is you need to survive long enough to be able to take advantage of them and you need the resources to develop these to be available - which means you need something to earn you enough credit with the powers, or something that makes you rich enough to to pay for them yourself.

for example with blueprints I'm rather sure the Romans could pull of a warm air balloon, and that's extremely useful for scouting at the very least.

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Blueprints would slow them down and make it more difficult to make (since they wouldn't match the available resources and skills) but other then that you're right.
Now how are you going to convince people who aren't quite sure scouting is worth the effort in the first place to spend the resources to develop this?

I mean crop rotation and any other information about farming that could be useful I don't know much of farming so I cant think of more but any information that don't rely on machines to help farm would be useful.

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Okay, a lot of what's refereed to as modern farming techniques relies on high technology, or centuries of selective breeding, or both but I agree some stuff (like crop rotations, or modern beehives) would be very useful if you're far enough back people haven't come up with it yet.

 

[Plotvitalnpc]

Atticus doesn't appear to refer to anything you can build.

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I think they mean an abacus.

 

[tarrangar]

I think they mean an abacus.

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I did I'm not a native English speaker and that word doesn't come up very often in Danish its called a kugleramme.

 

[tarrangar]

True, the point is you need to survive long enough to be able to take advantage of them and you need the resources to develop these to be available - which means you need something to earn you enough credit with the powers, or something that makes you rich enough to to pay for them yourself.

Blueprints would slow them down and make it more difficult to make (since they wouldn't match the available resources and skills) but other then that you're right.
Now how are you going to convince people who aren't quite sure scouting is worth the effort in the first place to spend the resources to develop this?

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This thread is for information useful in the past not just information instantly useful in the past so just because it cant be used instantly don't mean it shouldn't be mentioned.
And with blueprints I didn't mean so much a step by step guide as a description of the principles of making a warm air balloon.

 

[Trilonias]

Man, those basic highschool science textbooks would be so useful here... also, certain history information. After all, you would need to know WHEN in time you are... and that's just the start! Know certain important people of that time period, and viola! Knowing who to avoid/get close to could be rather important... along with the how.

 

[DCF]

Just get a copy of this book and take it with you.

Ok, it's made with the assumption that you're post-apocalyptic rather than being in the past and there are a few things that are specific to that but 90% of what's in there will still be applicable.

 

[The Unicorn]

This thread is for information useful in the past not just information instantly useful in the past so just because it cant be used instantly don't mean it shouldn't be mentioned.

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True. However information that is only useful if you have a massive amount of resources isn't useful on its own it needs to be paired with stuff that lets you get those resources.

And with blueprints I didn't mean so much a step by step guide as a description of the principles of making a warm air balloon.

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Please do not misuse precise terms. If you didn't mean a blueprint you shouldn't have used the term.

Ok, it's made with the assumption that you're post-apocalyptic rather than being in the past and there are a few things that are specific to that but 90% of what's in there will still be applicable.

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I seriously doubt that. In a post apocalyptic scenario you have many resources you do not have in the 'thrown back in time' scenario but the reverse is also true. Judging from the free sample available on Amazon that book is an overview of how to rebuild a shattered society but doesn't actually contain much detailed information.

It did however remind me of something that would greatly help society and possibly make the time traveler rich - illustrations of Birthing forceps.

Man, those basic highschool science textbooks would be so useful here.

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True, but not as much as you might think. They tend to include a bunch of implicit assumptions and generally don't tell you how to get the materials you need for the first several iterations of tools-to-build-tools, however handing copies of those books and a table of alchemical to modern chemical names to several medieval alchemists could produce a lot of useful results (you'd want several copies because one of the more likely results is a dead alchemist).

 

[DCF]

I seriously doubt that. In a post apocalyptic scenario you have many resources you do not have in the 'thrown back in time' scenario but the reverse is also true. Judging from the free sample available on Amazon that book is an overview of how to rebuild a shattered society but doesn't actually contain much detailed information.

It did however remind me of something that would greatly help society and possibly make the time traveler rich - illustrations of Birthing forceps.

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Only the first chapter really deals with scavenging the previous society. After that it begins talking about historical technologies, historical chemistry, etc - some of which will already be possessed by the past civ but you can very much pick up on whatever stage you're at and look and what they don't yet have and begin implementing those.. It talks about which steps of technology can be skipped if you know certain things, what technologies can be achieved much sooner than they were historically (eg Roman quality glasswear probably created a good enough seal to conduct the process we use to make canned food - they just didn't).

 

[The Unicorn]

Only the first chapter really deals with scavenging the previous society.

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As I said, the book appears to provide an overview but not really enough details to apply to almost anything. You could use that book to figure out which books you should take with you but it on its own probably won't be much use.

 

[Heaven Canceler]

Some stuff Napoleon used like towers that have mirrors inside to send messages over long range per morse code through light reflections.

 

[DCF]

As I said, the book appears to provide an overview but not really enough details to apply to almost anything. You could use that book to figure out which books you should take with you but it on its own probably won't be much use.

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So ideally the rebooting civilisation would want to leapfrog over the easy but wasteful Leblanc process and move directly to a more efficient system. The Solvay process is slightly more intricate, but ingeniously employs ammonia to close the loop: the reagents it uses are recycled within the system, minimising wasteful by-products and thus also pollution.
The chemical reaction at the core of the Solvay process is this. When a compound known as ammonium bicarbonate is added to strong brine the bicarbonate ion swaps over on to the sodium to form sodium bicarbonate (identical to the rising agent used in baking), which can then simply be heated to change to soda ash. The first step in achieving this is to pass the strong brine through two towers, with first ammonia gas and then carbon dioxide bubbling up through them to dissolve in the salty water and combine to make the crucial ammonium bicarbonate. The swapping reaction occurs with the salt, creating sodium bicarbonate which doesn't dissolve and so settles as a sediment to be collected. The ammonia is the key ingredient for this stage as it keeps the brine nicely alkaline and so ensures that the bicarbonate of soda can't dissolve, neatly separating these two salts. The carbon dioxide needed for this initial step is baked out of limestone in a furnace (in exactly the same way we saw in Chapter 5 for burning lime for mortar and concrete production). The quicklime left behind is itself added to the brine solution after the soda has been extracted and regenerates the ammonia bubbled in originally, ready to be used again. So overall, the Solvay process consumes only sodium chloride salt and limestone, and alongside the valuable soda produces just calcium chloride as a by-product, which itself is used for spreading as de-icing salt on wintry roads. This elegantly self-contained system, cleverly recycling the key ammonia as it goes and built using only fairly rudimentary chemical steps, is still the major source of soda worldwide today (except in the United States, where a large deposit of the sodium carbonate mineral trona was discovered in Wyoming in the 1930s). And for a recovering civilisation the Solvay process presents a marvellous opportunity to leapfrog over less efficient and noxiously polluting alternatives for producing vital soda.

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I'll admit you'll require a bit of tinkering to get everything to work but a lot of the details are there.

 

[The Unicorn]

Some stuff Napoleon used like towers that have mirrors inside to send messages over long range per morse code through light reflections.

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You're thinking of Heliograph (a type of semaphore), and I don't think that was particularly associated with Napoleon.

It would be quite useful in war or to help a nation but unless you have the position of royal wizard of something similar you're not going to get rich from it.

I'll admit you'll require a bit of tinkering to get everything to work but a lot of the details are there.

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Besides "a bit of tinkering" there's a bunch of missing information. I have not read the book so I'll grant it's possible the book gives enough details on some specific items to get them - it will certainly provide enough information to drastically reduce the amount of time experts will require to develop those systems (but then just the knowledge that they exist would do that). However given the length of the book to do so it would have to skip over a lot of other material.

 

[Heaven Canceler]

You're thinking of Heliograph (a type of semaphore), and I don't think that was particularly associated with Napoleon.

It would be quite useful in war or to help a nation but unless you have the position of royal wizard of something similar you're not going to get rich from it.

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Edit:Ah yeah, and he used them big time during the war from what I found on Wikipedia.

I really have to read more carefully.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line

 

[DCF]

You're thinking of Heliograph (a type of semaphore), and I don't think that was particularly associated with Napoleon.

It would be quite useful in war or to help a nation but unless you have the position of royal wizard of something similar you're not going to get rich from it.


Besides "a bit of tinkering" there's a bunch of missing information. I have not read the book so I'll grant it's possible the book gives enough details on some specific items to get them - it will certainly provide enough information to drastically reduce the amount of time experts will require to develop those systems (but then just the knowledge that they exist would do that). However given the length of the book to do so it would have to skip over a lot of other material.

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Of course a book can't contain all the knowledge of civilization. It focuses on giving you some important core advances. The last chapter of the book is a guide to scientific methodology and practice and such so your new civilization can invent the rest by itself.

 

[The Unicorn]

Of course a book can't contain all the knowledge of civilization.

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Then we're in agreement.

 

[pepperjack]

Nope, except for the heat pasteurization line there's nothing useful there.

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If you feel there's nothing useful in that image aside from pasteurization, your standards are too high.

 

[Plotvitalnpc]

Maybe give them a map of the world with a clear scale they'd understand and with the most detail where things are relevant to their interests.
IE, giving Rome one that emphasizes granularity in the Roman sphere of influence, but also such things as China.

 

[The Unicorn]

If you feel there's nothing useful in that image aside from pasteurization, your standards are too high.

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I might have missed something, what else would be useful in that image?

 

[pepperjack]

I might have missed something, what else would be useful in that image?

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Most things? Without even looking at it again, just going off of memory - the airfoil explanation, the description of cowpox (so you can vaccinate yourself against smallpox, which could otherwise kill you), instructions for generating electricity from easily available materials, the instructions for harvesting insulin from livestock along with the description of the most obvious symptoms of diabetes... there were a fair number of things I thought could be useful, is what I'm saying.

 

[DCF]

I'm just gonna go ahead and get this one out of the way.

Spoiler: Let's say you've gone back in time

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Well, at least it's better than the one made in the same style for first contact with aliens (which was utter bullshit).

 

[The Unicorn]

Most things? Without even looking at it again, just going off of memory - the airfoil explanation, the description of cowpox (so you can vaccinate yourself against smallpox, which could otherwise kill you), instructions for generating electricity from easily available materials, the instructions for harvesting insulin from livestock along with the description of the most obvious symptoms of diabetes... there were a fair number of things I thought could be useful, is what I'm saying.

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Air foil - Absolutely useless without a LOT more information, the amount of information there isn't even enough to be dangerous

Cowpox - Point, I missed that.

Electricity - while "Instructions for generating electricity from easily available materials" might be useful what is there is an "explanation" that is so general and vague it might as well be wrong. Anyone who could use that to do anything wouldn't need to be told it.

Insulin - Nope, it's a bit better than the airfoil bit in that there might be enough there to be dangerous but it's still not useful for a time traveler. Also while the symptoms listed might be the most obvious ones for diabetes they are far from unique for it. It's possible to write within the space allotted to the description of diabetes enough information that would be highly valuable to a 19th century doctor however what is written is not it and writing something that would be useful to someone who has no idea what diabetes is would need several thousand words at a minimum.

Nearly everything in that page is random facts which if you know enough to be able to use them, you know enough to not need to be told.