Assuming we’re going back far enough, antibiotics. Cure one person of the bubonic plague or tuberculosis and people will start taking you seriously.
Often wondered how much mileage one could get out of moldy bread. This looks promising, haven’t read it all.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ubrekq/before_flemings_accidental_discovery_of/
Burn the witch!!!
Depending how far back I am going, my smartphone would be sufficient. Even without any kind of connection, it can do some rad stuff that would blow the minds of anyone in the 90’s or earlier.
Charging wouldn’t be that difficult either if its pre USB-C. A nice steady 5V trickle at two visible connectors. Get yourself a nice thin copper wire with the right number of turns along a rotating magnet, and crank that handle gently
Take a photo of them. Then zoom in. If that doesn’t blow their minds, take a video of them and play it back.
Digital cameras have been commercially available as early as the late 80s, but were of course super low res and with terrible image quality even accounting for that compared to what I just carry in my pocket now.
A fistfull of random coins of varying ages.
Pictures of them holding a newspaper
Alright you primitive screw heads, listen up! You see this? This, is my boomstick! The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart’s top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That’s right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five. It’s got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That’s right, shop smart shop, shop S-Mart. You got that?
I see Ash, I upvote.
Introducing firearms even sooner in history… What could go wrong. Surely won’t change the course of history or anything. ☺️
Being a gun nut, I’ve thought on this. Take something simple like an AR-15 back. They wouldn’t have had the metallurgy 150 years back to duplicate it. Not the barrel or bolt anyway. Springs? Certainly not the propellant. What about the precision needed for the shells alone? And forget rifling a barrel!
I’ve got a couple of 130-yo, double-barrelled shotguns. One is Damascus steel, the other is Belgian laminated steel. Sounds fancy, may rapidly disassemble with modern shot.
Bet the mechanisms and overall design would be a mind blower! Mankind, being mankind, would certainly figure a way to get some kinda better killing machine out of the deal.
LOL, this would have been a solid /r/AskHistorians question!
guns of the south by harry turtledove is based on this premise
I’d bring a scientist with me. Not sure which one. Just grab one with a cloth sack when they’re having breakfast with their kids, and stuff em into my time machine. They’ll figure it out.
Then I’d prod them to do future math and stuff for peasant farmers.
Then the peasant farmers either burn you both for witchcraft or shun you as the village idiot rambling about nonsense.
But… but… The Taylor Series expansions!
I would bring a list of supernovas that occured in my past, but in the future of the time I traveled to. A couple matching observations will provide indisputable proof that I have information from the future.
At first I thought you talked about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Been a while since I heard Supernova for it’s actual meaning o_o
I’ve never heard a nuclear bombing described as a supernova, but you do you?
It’s a somewhat apt descriptor. 🤷🏻
A bag of cool ranch Doritos.
An almanac of the time period I’ve traveled to.
I think a dirtbike and some gas would do it tbh
A time machine.
That’s not a time machine, that’s a phone blue booth.
Bring a gun so I can shoot some nazis.
Nay, a nuke with the power of Fat Man in the middle of Berlin in 1933.
Sorry Germans, I know not everyone is a nazi, but hitler and the rest of the nazis gotta go 💥
Anything weaker is just gonna result in hitler escaping again
Imagine how beautiful the world would be if the nazis were eradicated before they start doing atrocities.
(Again, sorry Germans, it had to be done. Enough of you will live to tell the tale that a time traveler saved y’all from fascism)
Aluminum foil
Generator. Television. PS2. Cowboy Bebop on DVD.
Idk if it would work at all, but TANK is such a good fucking song, and I hope they enjoy at least that much before burning me for witchcraft.
One lower case “r”, and no ragrets.
Hey. I got lots of good responses without doing anything. Don’t want to jinx it.
“Behold! my field of ragrets! Lay thine eyes upon it and see that it is fallow!”
I’m just impressed you know what i mean. I appove.
