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Make thin copper wire. (Or other metal should work. Anything you can work into a thin wire. Copper is one of the easiest to make thin wire from, but gold would also work well if you can afford it.)
Coat the wire in a thin layer of wax.
Coil the wire.
Spin a lodestone rapidly inside the coil.
Electricity will then come from the ends of the wires.
Come on, people. Stop reveling in your ignorance and go learn something.
Then somehow out of your hands, the time machine takes you to the time of ea-nasir, and you wind up learning the language just to write a strongly worded tablet.
Me, in my failed electricity shop: "What the hell is with all of this damned, low-quality copper?"
Except you end up before the Bronze Age with people asking “what is this metal you speak of?”, in whatever language you definitely would not know.
Well, yeah. In any case, the language barrier will have to be overcome first. No matter who you are or what you're trying to do, if you go more than a few hundred years in the past, you're probably going to need to learn a new language before you can communicate anything to anyone. Even if you know a very old language, it was probably spoken very differently in antiquity than the way people speak it now.
The copper age did precede the bronze age
"Can you make very thin strands of copper and do you know what magnets are?"
No, but i do know the average velocity of an unladen swallow...
African or European?
what kind?
You also need chargeable batteries, so you need
The Anode - Lead Dioxide, a mineral called Plattnerite yields it, or it can be obtained by heating lead metal in open air at 600 Celsius and then turning the resulting Lead Monoxide powder into Red Lead via calcination which is just heating it again. Do your best to turn it into a plate form, perhaps by smelting some conductive material like copper onto it, idk.
The Cathode - Pure Lead plate
Sulfuric Acid - You can find Sulfur as a mineral, then mix with saltpeter, and then burn it to create sulfur oxide which if piped into water will produce the acid.
Glass fiber plates to place between the Anodes and cathodes so that they do not touch
A container, likely a ceramic.
Notes: Saltpeter can either be mined or obtained by soaking bat guano until small crystals form and then filtered out. Since this is a liquid batter it has to always be kept upright.
Batteries are not needed to generate electricity. But also: I present: The Baghdad Battery.
Guess they'll have to build an engine or generator.
A generator. And run it on gasoline. Distilled from petrole— uh-oh.
Bah the Permian is still long past and the carboniferous has left coal
Had a thought about me being in a scenario like this.
My answer on what to teach would be early industrial mechanisms. Show them the concepts of machines that paved the way towards the industrial revolution. Water wheels, gears and cogs, powered tools like saws and hammers, pumps. Then I would lead them forward towards more advanced metal working.
All of these would be pretty easy to engrave into your memory without relying on lists of facts. I already understand a lot of them just by playing video games and watching stuff like How It's Made.
The Qing empire concluded steam engines were "clever, but useless" to actively harmful, and thats after seeing them in the rest of the world. Rome built a steam engine, and didn't particularly care as they had slaves for productive work. The Ottoman Empire used steam to turn kebab, and that's it. Spain (and every other empire) actively sabotaged industrial development in the colonies, since that represented competition, and production of higher-value goods means less cheap labor and resources. Today we can feed everyone, but don't because its not profitable. We could educate 10x more scientists, but choose not to.
The point is the bigger blocker isn't scuentific knowledge, but social development.
the bigger blocker isn't scientific knowledge, but social development.
Welp, I’m an autistic woman and I’m not that good at masking. I guess it was good while it lasted, friends.
Social development doesn't mean the development of social skills in this context lol.
[During the physical stage], society is preoccupied with bare survival and subsistence. People follow tradition strictly, and there is little innovation and change. Land is the main asset and productive resource during the physical stage, and wealth is measured by the size of land holdings. This is the agrarian and feudal phase of society. Inherited wealth and position rule the roost and there is very little upward mobility. Feudal lords and military chiefs function as the leaders of the society. Commerce and money play a relatively minor role. As innovative thinking and experimental approaches are discouraged, people follow tradition unwaveringly and show little inclination to think outside of established guidelines. Occupational skills are passed down from parent to child by a long process of apprenticeship.
Guilds restrict the dissemination of trade secrets and technical knowledge. The Church controls the spread of new knowledge and tries to smother new ideas that does not agree with established dogmas. The physical stage comes to an end when the reorganization of agriculture gives scope for commerce and industry to expand. This happened in Europe during the 18th century when political revolutions abolished feudalism and the Industrial Revolution gave a boost to factory production. The shift to the vital and mental stages helps to break the bonds of tradition and inject new dynamism in social life.
(Emphasis mine) I didn’t mean like that, lol. They’d just find me… undogmatic, to say the least.
Well that's sucks lol
Eh, it just changes what your task is; social development is driven by the evolution of the means of production, which is largely influenced by technology; as a rule any progress is going to be opposed by any faction that would see its power decrease, and embraced by the group that stands to gain.
Weavers and kings aren't going to embrace the automatic loom, but theres certainly some rich, lower nobility/merchants who want power over the peasants and upper nobility will.
"One day you will be rich tech oligarchs and rule the world!"
Ruling class: "We already rule the world, that tech is going to fuck up the bag. Guards, stab him."
Merchant: "I have 100 ships currently hauling from 10,000 farms, and you're telling me anyone can make it anywhere? If this catches on, Ill be ruined. Stabbing you is basically self-defense"
Peasent class: "Wait so the lord will only need 1/10th us to do ?? Fuck that shit, you want 90% of us to get drafted into some dumb war? We gotta stab him before the lord finds out."
The highest reward:lowest memorization ratio has got to be introducing people to Pasteur’s spontaneous generation experiments, and it’s not even close. That kick started the modern understanding of germ theory and revolutionized healthcare, and all you need to demonstrate it is someone that knows how to blow clear glass.
Meanwhile I’m just strapping slices of moldy bread to wounds and hoping for the best
You could probably get one step further:
"Spin magnets fast"
"How do you get magnets"
"I don't know"
I feel like you would be able to describe the concept of a metal that seems to stick to other metals and you would like to be able to find a magnetic material they do occur naturally
I thought you had to rub cats with amber
Someone should make a site that quizzes you on time travel knowledge. Go through the ages: how do you start a fire, how do you make steel & what's the best method of smelting, what is germ theory & the best methods for preserving food, what are the causes of common diseases, how do you make a steam engine, what is penicillin & how do you produce it at scale, how do you make a battery, how do you make a solar panel, how does nuclear energy work, etc...
Definitely recommend watching Doctor Stone. Great anime and shows the science well, although taking few liberties with obtaining the amount of metals you'd need.
Penicillin is easy. You just keep injecting people with mouldy watermelons until the appropriate result appears.
Simple tools would be a better idea to bring to the past.
The cotton Ginny, the loom, other textile based inventions. Corner the textile market and make sure that you pay people fairly. More importantly make sure to push workers and slaves have rights. Surround myself by well paid union workers
Change the world and take down kings and priests.
I feel like you would die.
This guy in particular especially too.
"Take down kings and priests"
Hmmm yes topple existing power structures with your... Textiles... And well paid union workers...
Better plan on bringing AK-47s instead and say they're a gift from the future God of Petrodollar
There is a segment of a Dara O'Brien tour where he jokes you are about 3 questions away from being an idiot if you time traveled. Apologies for the YouTube link
You're gonna need lots copper wire.
Don't worry. I know a guy
Oh thank the gods, I really needed somebody who could deliver me quality copper.
Tbf just the knowledge that it exists and is achievable would take us like 1000 years into future.
They knew it existed but they didn't grasp a use for it. If I recall correctly, some cultures made primitive batteries and steam engines and just used them as a party trick/religious focus to zap people or make little toys move.
The real technology booster would be cheap paper and the printing press. Second best would be materials science tech, letting them have processes to make cheap and durable tools and instruments, that stuff took millions of man-hours of trial and error to figure out.
yeah and it's for the better that it took millions of man-hours to figure out. humanity needs to mature before higher tech is introduced. imagine if the romans had had powerful machines. they would have just killed everyone. humanity had to mature like a yeast dough before it's ready for tech.
Y'all should read: A Yankee in King Arthur's Court to really get an idea on how it could turn out. Knights branded like Nascar drivers for soap brands to wash away the stink lol.
spoiler
Stuntin' on Merlin by blowing up shit with gunpowder and lightning!
Literally splitting towers in Twain