Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

[FriedPhoton]

If you've never read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, it is about a man transported back in time to the middle-ages. He uses his scientific knowledge to redevelop technologies and obtain power and status. He begins an underground movement teaching and using "high" technology of his own day.

I sometimes enjoy thinking about what I'd do if I was transported back in time on a one-way ticket, or what I'd do if stranded on a deserted island, but I prefer the time travel because it doesn't require you to be in a place with limited resources.

What would you do if you were transported back in time? How would you go about it? Pick your own place to go if the materials you need are there and not somewhere else, or better yet, suggest a place that would be one of the best places to be located in such a situation (all hedonism aside).

I think creating gun-powder would be one of the more important things to do, such as was done in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but what else might be possible to do?

I think this would be more interesting if people imagined they were transported this instant without the opportunity to look anything up on Wikipedia before going. You have to go with your current knowledge and nothing more, so try to refrain from looking stuff up unless it is to resolve a dispute about something.

[Maksutov]

[edit]What would you do if you were transported back in time?...I'd be very, very careful. Being hanged as a witch is not a pleasant experience. Nor is being hanged.

Even more careful here, being a Connecticut Yankee. And Red Sox fan (re the American League).

[Big Bad Boo]

I, being uneducated in the ways of advanced science, would drink a gentle poison that will merely put me to sleep (although that may not even exist now) because I have no skills in the harvesting of Insulin, or the technology to make a blood glucose meter.

Just sayin'.

[Tog_]

I, being uneducated in the ways of advanced science, would drink a gentle poison that will merely put me to sleep (although that may not even exist now) because I have no skills in the harvesting of Insulin, or the technology to make a blood glucose meter.

Just sayin'.

I have a writer's guide to poisons (sort of a short encyclopedia to get the details right when writing fiction) that says the story behind Cleopatra and Marc Anthony being bitten by an asp as a form of suicide was because in the "tests" they did, it seemed like the least painful.

The same book lists treatment for cyanide, though you need to do it in a matter of seconds, but no treatment at all for curare as "It acts too fast".

For me, the only real "skill" I carry with me in enough detail to use without reference is martial arts instructing. While it could be of use in just about any time frame, I sort of doubt it would be in much demand without having to beat the current teacher. Given my computer sculpted physique, I just don't see what I know being able to top what the other could actually DO.

[DyerWolf]

Gunpowder is the obvious: but the witch thing does put a damper on its allure.

More useful (at least initially - esp. if you have a manly physique) would be to create (if not already there) a set of good pole-arms - like the halberd. You can then arm and train a large set of the local population with a weapon they can easily master & defend themselves against the local landed classes with their fancy horses and long pointy sticks. Could seriously improve your life expectancy.

If you're less of the hack-n-slash type; go into toiletries. The early makers of soap made an absolute killing. Manufacture a good set of scissors, fingernail clippers and tweezers and set yourself up in style near a hot-water spring and invite the landed gentry in.

If you can also figure out how to make DDT - well, you're on your way to riches and a decent lifestyle free of plague. Hire a few sewage engineers, bring in clean water, and you're sure to find a good patron.

Then, once you're established, pull in a few bell makers, who, using the lost-wax method, can cast you a few cannon to impress your employer with (and help him retain power) and you'll probably get a couple of taps on each shoulder with the sword (beats one in the neck!).

Oh - and whatever you do; tithe heavily.

[Tedward]

Interesting but I wonder how many would have pre conceived idea's dash in reality when they arrive?

Me, I would go back with some medical training and keep alive (if it was medically possible) the Black Prince or Henry V. Be interesting to see their outcomes.

[KLIK]

I'd hire, beg, borrow or steal a ship and discover America. Then I'd import tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, chillies and tobacco. Then I'd probably retire.

In reality I'd probably be shocked by how squalid it was (maybe not, I've grown up around Devon farms!), and struggling to start from basics as I suspect a lot of my knowledge presupposes a certain level of technology.

I might also keel over as my immune system isn't geared for 900? yr old bugs.

Crop rotation would be a good one (anything without too much technology).

Funny that you can't look up bomb making in this country on the net but you can in CYinKAC (14:14:72 ?) or various Heinlein books.

[DyerWolf]

Funny that you can't look up bomb making in this country on the net but you can in CYinKAC (14:14:72 ?) or various Heinlein books.

Times was differn't not too long aback. Why my ol' gran-pappy used to make his own explosives to use on the farm. Even my pa used to tinker with his chemistry set'n blow stuff up.

Folks is more cautious now.

You kin lern anything you want about stuff, so long as 'taint useful nor fun.

[FriedPhoton]

This concept does not have to fall in line with the book. As I said, you can pick the place, or even the time, just as long as it is sufficiently far back that even the simple things we take for granted today would not be present.

Personally, I would stay away from populations of people simply because of the diseases mentioned above. There's also the "witch" problem.

I think that even the least technologically adept people might be able to figure out how to make a windmill or a watermill.

I don't know the key ingredients to making glass but I would experiment with melting sand and adding things until I could make a clear glass. Then I would make lenses. One major benefit of having a lens would be the ability to use the sun to make a fire, but a secondary, and much more fun, if not practical application, would be to make telescopes to take advantage of the wonderful lack of light pollution. Imagine being able to go outside each night and see the stars without light pollution. I'd never get any sleep.

I would not know what sort of rocks to look for, but I would initially spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to create metal. I suppose I would have to wander around for a while, making really hot fires and melting whatever promising rocks I found (as I would be doing in my attempt to make glass anyway), and then experiment with whatever I managed to extract once I did so. In addition to creating tools, metals would give you the opportunity to try making wire, and once you've done that many other interesting things can follow.

For instance, I would make a bunch of different crystal radio receivers. This may sound like an odd idea to some of you but think about the ability to perform radio astronomy in ideal conditions. Even natural noise on Earth would be interesting and would provide another thing to study, but you could probably make crystal sets to listen to noise from the sun, and whatever you might find on low frequencies coming from space. The nice thing about crystal sets is that they require no source of electricity aside from what hits the antenna.

I would also try to make paper. I know paper is made from trees but I have no idea how to make it, so I would probably start by boiling wood and seeing what sort of mush I could make from doing that and then dry the mush in sheets.

I would make bricks and try making pottery so I would have dishes and containers in which to store things.

I most certainly would begin gardening in the hope of being able to stay in one place for a long time. If I found good grains I would use either a windmill or watermill to grind them to flour. I would also reinvent beer.

I would begin experimenting with chemistry and try to learn how to make different substances. I wouldn't know what those substances were but I could probably deduce a lot from the little I already know about chemistry. Knowing there is such a thing as the atom is a huge advantage.

If given the choice between a windmill or a watermill I would invest my time and effort in a watermill. It would be more reliable and constant, and I'd enjoy living near water anyway simply for sanitary reasons. My home could have running water, I could use my hot fires to provide hot water for bathing too. And this brings to mind steam. I know I can get useful work from steam so I would experiment with that.

[mike alexander]

How far back are you going? Beer has been around as least as long as the Egyptian Old Kingdom, waterwheels for two millenia, windmills over one. Odds are the local brickmaker would be better at it than you.

I have no interest in going back at all, since we all tend to forget that progress is cumulative. Build a crystal receiver? Where do you get wire?

[Moose]

It depends on how much preparation time I'm given. I could fall back to being a scribe if I really had to, and go from there.

But with some time to prepare, I'd go back with the scientific method, medical training (probably paramedic) and you could expect penicillin to be invented a little early. The idea is to hopefully nudge society into blaming their personal hygiene and rats/fleas/mosquitoes for their disease experience, and not cats.

Basically try and redirect those dark-age quacks into doing something that's actually beneficial to their patients.

[tdvance]

then, though it was a joke, but it had some truth to it--Arthur Dent landing on the Bob-fearing planet--he found that, though he was from a world more technologically advanced than on this planet, he knew too little of how to make the technology work to actually help the people (other than making sandwiches, which they hadn't invented yet). Each of us probably knows how to make very little--well, gunpowder maybe, but my late grandfather, an Indian enthusiast, tried to make his own arrowheads but was never successful--even old technology is hard and had to be taught carefully to the next generation. New isn't any easier, mostly.

[FriedPhoton]

How far back are you going? Beer has been around as least as long as the Egyptian Old Kingdom, waterwheels for two millenia, windmills over one. Odds are the local brickmaker would be better at it than you.

I have no interest in going back at all, since we all tend to forget that progress is cumulative. Build a crystal receiver? Where do you get wire?

In the post you are questioning I stated where I would get the wire. Obviously I would have to learn to make metal spaghetti. I could make a capacitor (even a variable capacitor) with simple thin sheets of metal, the semiconductor would be provided thanks to a quartz crystal, and the only real problem is the inductor. All this would require something like wire, but I'll bet crude thin strips of metal would work, or if I could make thin enough sheets of metal I could roll it into wire. I don't see it as being a huge technological hurdle. It is likely a short term project.

I suppose I should have qualified what I was saying by mentioning that I am imagining being in America five hundred years ago. I think people are missing the point. This isn't intended to be an historical study, nor a sociological study, for all I care you could be dropped on a planet just like Earth that has everything except humans.

The idea, and the part of this mental exercise that appeals to me, is to explore what an individual might be able to do, alone, with the scientific knowledge gained within their lifetime. I added the "no prep" clause because I thought it would cause people to dig deeper and be more creative if they had to search their memories for how they could pull something off and to test themselves and their current knowledge.

[mugaliens]

A lot of people are under the mistaken belief that things were horribly primitive in the middle ages, or even 2,000 years ago, or, for that matter, when the pyramids in Egypt were being build 4,500 years ago.

Even back then they had trebuchets, and could hurl large boulders hundreds of yards, smashing through very large, thick stone walls of fortresses. Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki and Ra expeditions substantiated that travel from Indonesia to South America was quite possible using just reeds bound together and simple sails, a fact which was further substantiated through genetic testing of various native South American tribes, which indicates they sailed there, rather than crossing ice in the Bearing Straight.

I don't know when the earliest stone tools were made, but they were entirely sufficient to support not mere survival, but for humans to thrive in primative times.

What would I do? To what time would I go?

I'd like to be in Italy during the time of Leonardo DaVinci, and help him make a working copy of a hang glider made of bamboo and cloth!

[DyerWolf]

Mugs is right. If you want to know what stoneage life was like, you could probably get a good picture from looking at the 15th - 18th century Amerind cultures.

Just because they didn't have the full tech tree developed, doesn't mean life was the squalid mess depicted in film (i.e regarding the middle ages "Bring out your dead...").

The fact is, if you survived childhood, you had a pretty good life expectancy.

Proof?

You don't find "elder reverence" in cultures without elders.

[Romanus]

I'd *really* want to see the Library of Alexandria, but since I don't know a single ancient language, and in any event would be transported as an instant pauper, I'd be wasting my time. I'd be more inclined to go into my own past and doctor up my life with everything I've learned since then.

[FriedPhoton]

This turned out to be a lot less interesting that I had hoped. I figured with all the engineers and scientists on this forum that some real creative solutions would be put forward.

A common person's knowledge of the technology around them may not be so great. But if thrust into a situation where they had years of idle time and any kind of desire to try to recreate the future, I'd bet a person with a high-school education could create things that would boggle the minds of people of the past. Personally I don't think I'd be too crazy about meeting "civilized" people other than perhaps finding a bunch of wives to start my own race, but I'd make them all take hot baths daily and introduce them to toothbrushes or I'd send 'em packin'.

I think I could take a fair stab at weather prediction from just knowing that there are relationships between barometric pressure, humidity, wind speed, and temperature. Making crude devices to study weather would be one side project.

I would most certainly enjoy astronomy and I'd probably invest a lot of time building a large observatory with as big a telescope as I could manage to make good lenses for.

I would use my simple knowledge of gardening and expand it to farming. I would have to learn how to domesticate animals because I know nothing about it, but I know which ones to go for.

I know I'd be vigilant in my search for marijuana because it is my understanding that hemp rope is very good rope and I'd need lots of rope. Of course I'd have to learn to make it, but that wouldn't take a rocket scientist.

I watched a show with Richard Leakey when I was a kid. He demonstrated how stone tools were made. I still remember what he did and could probably get good at it with some practice. However, until I learned to make cutting tools I'd just use fire.

I know I can make a canoe by burning a log into the right shape with properly applied coals. Spear fishing would probably be easy since none of the lakes or streams would be fished out or polluted. I'd probably eat pretty good considering the fat fish I'd be able to catch. And later, after I developed my skills with hemp, I could make nets so I wouldn't have to waste much time collecting food.

I'm fairly certain that saponine was used for tanning hides and I'm fairly sure sage and black walnut fruits contain a lot of it, although I could be wrong about the name (saponine) I think I am remembering its usefulness as a tanning agent correctly.

There are tons of things I think I'd be able to do, so I'm kind of surprised that not many people have had ideas.

[KLIK]

If going back earlier than medieval (or even ala Swiss Family Robinson-great book), I could probably do better, but a lot of our knowledge/construction presupposes a knowledge foundation to build on, inventing electricity would be great; after inventing wire, after inventing smelting after inventing prospecting; and then I'd probably kill myself smelting arsenopyrite thinking it was chalcopyrite.
I could make bellows for smelting.

I'd know flint and ironstone to make sparks, but the twirly wood-in-a-plank thing is harder than it looks.
also ammonia from urine to defat and then stretch skins,

I've tried flint knapping and still have a scar, basket weaving is more difficult than it looks.

I could make a water wheel, wooden gears etc.
It would be worth doing Mendels and DeVriess' genetic experiments.
Birch bark canoes.
wattle and daub, and even bricks,
I know roughly what local wild plants to eat; and how to check for edibility.

I think I know enough to survive comfortably if dumped in wilderness, but I'm under no illusions about being capable of reinventing civilisation; I even suspect I'd wind up early civilisations too easily ;-)

[Larry Jacks]

While speculating about going back in the past is interesting, if the premise of this movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/) is accurate (and I have not seen it), going a few hundred years into the future might be more interesting.

For those who want more info before clicking the link, it goes to the IMDB entry for a movie called "Idiocracy". The comedy is about an average man from today being put into suspended animation for 500 years. When he wakes up, he finds that the trend of smart people putting off having children while the dumb bred like bunnies has resulted in a society of idiots. He finds that he's the smartest person on Earth. It's supposed to be a pretty funny movie although very crude humor.

Here are a couple (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upyewL0oaWA) video clips (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z33gpRWWXPA) from the movie. Warning - profanity. Lot's of profanity.

[tdvance]

I guess "Engineers and Scientists" might translate into "realists" :)

Maybe if it were a creative writing board....or a humor board, since Twain wrote the story to illustrate certain concepts through the humor of it all (he claimed the main thing he wanted people to get out of the story was that the "divine right of kings" or the "nobility" of nobles was a croc). There were a few other things, like the economics lesson where the "native" couldn't understand how he could make more money than the guy in a different town with different "value for a dollar", but still be poorer than him.

[HenrikOlsen]

The same book lists treatment for cyanide, though you need to do it in a matter of seconds, but no treatment at all for curare as "It acts too fast".
From my reading on the subject, I'd gotten the impression that curare works as a neurotoxin, paralyzing all voluntary muscles which for this situation includes those involved in breathing (without the victim losing conscience from the poison itself), and that death is from asphyxiation rather that from a direct effect of the poison, so mouth-to-mouth should keep the victim alive (and possibly conscious) for long enough for the antidote to get there.


As for thing I'd do, supposing we're more than a couple of hundred years back, first learn the language, then find a moneylender and (for lots of money) do his books, Arabic numerals and double entry bookkeeping has the roman numerals beat for everything.

For bootstrapping from all the way back, I know basic flintknapping (the oldest profession) and bow making.

If we're back before early iron age, I'm a passable blacksmith and do know how to make charcoal and which rocks have iron (at least locally).
Using ocher for pigment is actually a bloody waste, as it's a perfectly good source for iron.

Middle to late iron age, I have techniques for maille-work they didn't know until after guns had made armor outdated.
My maille-shirt allows the arms to be raised well above shoulder height without lifting a lot of the material down the sides and does so without leaving holes or having a lot of material bunch up in the armpits when the arms are down.

After that, scribe or calculator.

[ktesibios]

Another idea Twain wanted to hammer in was that "an established Church is an established crime and an established slave-pen". His hostility toward a privileged ecclesiastical establishment and to government-supported religion is made very clear if you get ahold of one of the editions of the book which include the original illustrations.

A long time ago i stumbled on a Web site which tried to take a realistic look at what would have been required to make the revolver the Boss uses to kill Sir Sagramor in their duel. It came out looking like a multi-year R&D project.

On the subject of tales of modern men stuck in an environment with no technology who develop their own, I can recommend Verne's The Mysterious Island, although I do wonder how someone whose background is described as engineering railroads (basically civil engineering) would be so astonishingly conversant with creating 19th-century chemical technology (like high explosives) from raw materials.

[Zachary]

What would I do? Hmm, well ignoring the whole paradox problems to effect any major changes I would need money and power, which as has been stated could be reasonably obtained by gifting gunpowder and cannons to the ruling elite. After that? Getting a running steam engine would be a priority along with introducing puddled wrought iron and crude blast furnaces to provide the materials to kick start a premature industrial revolution. Increased mechanisation would require more efficient food production. Partly that could be achieved by removing traditional strip farming methods with more efficient practices, and mechanised farm units (tractors/ploughs etc).

A lot could be changed not with technical know how but just with modern understanding of our natural world; teach people that disease is spread by bacteria and not through miasmas (a microscope would help here), having a proper attempt to introduce sanitation networks in the most populous cities would help.

Penicillin would have to be a major priority; can't get much done when 30% of the population dies of plague every 2 decades.

Oh and I'd write a big book containing the scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment, plus a few more. Though that would probably need to be published after my death unless I become king/emperor of wherever I landed.

If I could effect an industrial revolution in a middle-ages agrarian society then I'd consider that a success.

[edit]and disclaimer: and yes, my civil engineering skills are rubbish, but assuming it's my time machine I'm obviously going to take a few years out to learn what I would need ;)[.edit]

[FriedPhoton]

I'm not sure what is involved in making plastic from crude oil, but finding crude oil would be high on my list because of its usefulness. I know I'd have to make a big cylinder to let the stuff settle and draw my kerosene and such off the top. I imagine the crud at the bottom is probably what is used to make plastic but I'd experiment with all of it until I got something resembling plastic. Once I could make plastic, I'd experiment further until I could make stiff plastics. One could make a lot of interesting lightweight weapons out of plastic, but it would be nice to have the extreme utility of plastics for all sorts of other tools and projects.

I would certainly build a chemistry lab and experiment a lot. If I could make glass I could make most of the equipment I'd need to keep me busy for ages. I think just an awareness of the scientific method could carry you far with experiments. But making paper would go a long way toward making the process efficient, so paper would be very important.

[FriedPhoton]

I was thinking about the whole penicillin concept and wondering how I'd go about figuring out which mold is penicillin. I guess if I could make a microscope I could experiment. Isn't agar agar extracted from kelp? If I couldn't make that I'd use mayonnaise to grow bacteria as unwilling victims in my endeavor.

But then I thought about the idea of simply staying away from other people to play it safe. Then I was like... wait... no women? Uh, uh... I'd lose that battle. It made me think that people five hundred years ago may be carrying bacteria my body isn't familiar with and just being around a healthy person might be dangerous. And then I realized that I'm a living decedent of people who survived those bacteria so I'm probably more immune to more diseases than the average person was back then, and it's entirely possible that I would be hazardous to them.

So it seems that penicillin would be important to develop before going out to meet the neighbors so if you make them sick you can hopefully prevent wiping them all out.