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Take a copper wire, twist it into a nice long coil, then take a rod of magnetized iron and give it the ol’ in-out… in-out… in-out… or something like that-ish?
The magnet part is hard to get and explain :/
We wouldnt become the smartest person by going back in time, rather we would become the most unhinged and luney.
Electricity is easy just rub some of those magical sticky rocks over those magical green rocks, if you want a lot of electricity stretch the green rocks into a small strand of hair and wrap it around a grain mill.
I know a great way to probably get ostracized or worse depending on when you suggest it:
Convince the medical staff to wash their hands. Germ theory was pretty controversial at first!
Funny enough, that was, in part, due to doctors having become a ‘gentlemanly’ profession in the 19th century! Are you suggesting, SIR, that a gentleman is unclean!?
Class is a funny fucking thing.
Before germ theory, many societies still participated in washing their hands, and some medical texts recommend doing so before surgery. Which, while a less extensive recommendation than in the modern day, is certainly better than the 19th century twits going from autopsies to deliveries without so much as a fuckin’ rinse!
I guess it just proves how integrated germ theory is to at least me now. Like if I have something on my hands I want to wash it off, but I need to wash it off before I eat or touch my eye or anything like that.
Also doctors are a weird thing class wise, because they require a ton of schooling and smarts. But also back then, it was pretty “dirty” (if not hard) work
I need to wash it off before I eat or touch my eye
I used to think I was like this, until COVID and face coverings happened and I realized just how much I mindlessly touch my face without realizing it. I’ve been working on it for years and still suck at it.
Why yes, I do get really sick about twice a year or so.
Yeah, it’s actually more the norm for physicians to be more of a middle-class profession, closer to teachers than aristocrats. But the position of authority combined with the increasing cultural value placed on learning (and certification) in the 18th and 19th centuries led doctors to become a more ‘respectable’ profession for the aristocracy (at least the lower aristocracy), until in the late 19th century the steady increase in certification intensity once again made it more middle-class.
It’s like how being an officer was once a very ‘middle class’ way of life (as TRUE aristocrats go into government, or just skip ahead to leading large units), but as respect for the officer class grew and professionalization meant that twits with NO military experience became less acceptable as generals, being a professional officer became more aristocratic in the 17th and 18th centuries. And then, as the rigors of officer training increased in the 20th century, it once more reverted to the middle class, lmao.
By way of contrast, engineering, both military and civilian, has always had a very rigorous education, and because, unlike pre-modern doctors, it is very apparent when you mess up, it’s hard to fake or cruise through (also why surgeons were historically lower-class than other doctors - easier to see when you fuck up). Because of that, it’s always been a very middle class profession. High enough to need education, low enough that no aristocrat is going to go through the trouble unless he’s really got a passion for it!
Yeah, I feel like engineering has firmly held the place it “should” across many many societies. Rarely anything other than a respectable middle/upper middle ground, but generally considered necessary and important.
Come on societies just let us run the place for a little. You’ll see a lot more trains
Like Dr Stone, who involves a whole village (like they don’t have anything better to do) to create a generator and lightbulbs and then nobody uses it.
Is that what happens in the anime? I’ve only read the manga and they definitely used the lights and were hyped about it
Got had news about copper…
Might have to go see Ea-Nasir
And magnets
I could possibly develop a working glider with the help of the best craftsmen and engineers available at the time within a year or two. Only problem is gliders are only useful to go from high places to low places, and it’s a one-way trip if you don’t have powered flight to tow them back into the air. I suppose maybe you could launch from a cliff and try to use thermals to bring you back up, but then you can’t really leave the cliff if you want to return to where you left. Of course, you better hope you can even be understood and that people actually take you seriously in the first place.
I could explain the mechanics of a basic steam engine, but I doubt they’d have the capability of building it unless I was also able to offer insights into a bunch of different prerequisite technologies such as machining and metallurgy, which I can’t. Then again, the first useable steam engines didn’t have perfectly honed cylinders or sophisticated metallurgy. I was thinking maybe I could set up some industrial-era machines to be powered by water and gears/belts, but without a lathe, I’m not sure all the necessary parts could be made. Maybe those parts could all be cast and then brought to a finished state, though.
I’d probably just have to settle with advancing medicine and various scientific fields by a few centuries. Not that I’m a genius or anything, just by giving basic tips like explaining germ theory and instructing everyone to frequently wash their hands with soap. Or telling farmers to rotate their crops on a 4-year cycle. Or teaching other scientists how proper science is done. Or saving countless lives from small pox by teaching doctors to inoculate people with cow pox first. Those advancements alone would land you in the annals of history and much acclaim during your lifetime, but you could do way more, too.
Anyone interested in this idea (and/or in expanding their general knowledge of the world around us) can check out The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnell and How to Invent Everything by Ryan North
I need a water mill and all the copper wire and magnets you can give me
Also a glassblower and… tungsten? Generator isn’t any use without something to power
Copper you say? I know a guy…
On second thought, aluminum will suffice. Im not sure I can trust your source…
How are you going to get aluminium if you don’t already have electricity, and quite a lot of it?
I think they had it in South America.
Too bad, before 1800 aluminum is more precious than gold.
He gets one bad review…. Geesh.
A motor is the same as a generator. Also a telegram is closing an electric circuit using a spring opened switch.
Waterwheel electric motors give you the capacity to prototype an electric train without all the horrible horrible metallurgy you need for a steam one.
I feel like it left out one of the easiest, yet most vital solutions: water treatment.
“Build a sand filter. It’s made of sand and rocks. Water goes in at the top, clean water comes out at the bottom (after running water through it a few days to get it started). Congratulations. You’ve just saved more lives than any almost other invention of modernity.”
I’ll bow to our lemmy historian, but wouldn’t water filtration be pretty ancient tech? The Romans had clean water delivery mastered, though much of that might have been through UV exposure and running water.
Maybe it’s my modern knowledge, but I’d think ancients would have figured out that the deeper the water source the cleaner, extrapolate from there?
My brain, presumably through evolution, tells me that the water in Clear Creek (literally the name), running over a sandy bottom, is safe, but the stagnant pools nearby are not. Would ancient people not have figured out filtration? I mean, I can see shit sink to the bottom of that running creek.
Only primitive forms of filtration were practiced - ie running extremely disturbed water through a sieve or the like - cloth or unglazed earthenware. But this was small scale in any case, and typically only removed the worst impurities.
Much of the clean water delivery from Roman technology wasn’t by cleaning the water itself, but by finding a clean source and delivering it through a clean channel - they would get as near to the spring as practical for a reservoir, and then have that feed into an all stone/concrete aqueduct. Since there’s nothing ‘dirty’ to contaminate the water, then, unlike in the course of a river’s flow, the water is delivered clean over however many miles it is to the destination. And that was considered the ‘easiest’ way to get clean water!
The Romans used settling basins to ensure that some turbidity that slipped in anyway was removed, but that’s just giving the water enough still-time (and a deep enough basin) for gravity to work its magic, letting heavier solid sink beneath the channel’s next opening before sending the water onwards.
The Mayans, interestingly enough, appear to have developed a form of sand filtration, and using extremely excellent materials for the job at that, but such techniques are absent from the rest of the world, to my knowledge, until ~1804 AD.
Insane, right?
London itself wouldn’t receive mandatory water filtration until 1852, and that was considered a cutting-edge move.
Part of the reason why it’s non-intuitive is that slow sand filters are extremely effective because they perform their function by two processes. Some turbidity is removed by how it’s ‘sieved’ through the sand and the rocks, but much of the bacteria and parasites are actually removed by larger microorganisms in the sand. The larger microorganisms mostly can’t filter down more than a few inches through the sand before they suffocate or the like; the smaller microorganisms present in the water that could filter through are slowed for long enough that they’re devoured by the larger ones.
The circle of life!
However, part of it is also just that… many ideas we take for granted are extremely modern inventions. Hell, doors didn’t have knobs until the 18th century, just handles. A simple idea is often worth a person’s weight in gold. “Let’s use sand and gravel to make water cleaner!” Congrats, you just saved millions of lives.
Ancient peoples knew stagnant water was generally unsafe, and that moving water was generally safe; and likewise that clear water was generally safe and that turbid waters were generally unsafe. However, that was as far as the understanding went - if the water tasted bad, that was another warning sign, but they had very little conception of germ theory. If the water looks clear and tastes fine, how can it be bad?
While clear water without a foul taste is a better sign than the reverse, it’s not nearly sufficient to guarantee that the water is healthy - bacteria can be present in large amounts before it starts to leave any sort of taste. So water filtration was not a high priority, and even if it was… well, no one had the idea (except the Mayans) to try to recreate the process of rain becoming groundwater before 1804.
I was hoping someone would bring up at least the Mayan example, advances in the americas are so frequently overlooked.
I bought this humorous time travel t-shirt for all my nephews and nieces. It has a bunch of scientific formulas and methods just in case you get caught back in time. It’s a genuine risk! With that shirt there is enough for you to be a wizard or a heretic. Just use caution as to whom you share the knowledge with.
Edit: Someone posted a link to the image on the shirt.
Or a retard that believes in negative numbers and zero.
Hey, I grew up in that era too, so I get habits are hard to break, but going forward, please don’t use that term on here. We’re trying to move past that kind of language.
What should I edit it to?
idiot works, but I’ve become fond of dum-dum over the last year;
it seems more cutesy, but somehow manages to be even more insulting without the usual negative associations…at least i don’t know of any ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Truck-kun is supposed to teach us all about how to do that.
