Going back 150 years - what would you do?

TheChosenOne

So imagine you suddenly went back 150 years. You travel back with all the objects you had with you at the moment it happened - example - clothes, phone, etc., this is not important.

The real question is, if you knew that you'd have to stay back there forever, what would you do? Who would you work as, how would you make a living? How would you use 150 years worth of knowledge?

Even if you had your phone with you - how would it help you? You know that soon, the cars will be a big thing, but would you know how to build one yourself? Or would you come up with the Theory of Relativity? I mean everyone knows E=mc^2, but that wouldn't be enough to stun the scientific community.

Share your thoughts below.

Omackeral

Well your phone wouldn't work, so that's that out the window.

darkpagandeath

I would make vulcanised rubber.

Zaph

I'd work on building a power supply and a time machine to get me back to present day before I died from one of the weird diseases that were prevalent back then.

Esel

No Windows either.

TheChosenOne

Omackeral wrote: »

Well your phone wouldn't work, so that's that out the window.

Well it would work up until it has charge. So you'd have to get Faraday or someone build a charger / battery with just the right amount of Amps, Voltage, etc. Or maybe you can take it apart or something?

Omackeral

I'd probably invent the Macarena. Both the song and the dance.

D Trent

Probably my girlfriends great granny

Jaysis she was a bang looking at old pics

Uriel.

I would invest in upcoming companies like Ford and gamble a lot. Fnuck work.

I'd also invent stuff... Like seafood chowder... Chooowdaaaa

Pro Hoc Vice

TheChosenOne wrote: »

Well it would work up until it has charge. So you'd have to get Faraday or someone build a charger / battery with just the right amount of Amps, Voltage, etc. Or maybe you can take it apart or something?

Who would you ring? How would you surf the internet?

Uriel.

TheChosenOne wrote: »

Well it would work up until it has charge. So you'd have to get Faraday or someone build a charger / battery with just the right amount of Amps, Voltage, etc. Or maybe you can take it apart or something?

Work how? Not to make calls or texts or use the interwebz though... So good luck playing angry birds or candy crush saga hmmm

gammygils

Go to the Wild West and go wild.
The US one. Not Connemara!

Omackeral

Uriel. wrote: »

I'd also invent stuff... Like seafood chowder... Chooowdaaaa

Chaudeur...

Pro Hoc Vice

D Trent wrote: »

Probably my girlfriends great granny

Jaysis she was a bang looking at old pics

And then become your GF's great grand dad. So you would have ridden your great grand daughter. Well done!

TheChosenOne

Pro Hoc Vice wrote: »

Who would you ring? How would you surf the internet?

Well I'm just saying that the phone WILL work, just with no connectivity functions. But you can bring it to a prominent electrical scientist of the time who would be able to understand how at least some aspects of the phone work and you'd be able to earn some money.

PARlance

TheChosenOne wrote: »

Well it would work up until it has charge. So you'd have to get Faraday or someone build a charger / battery with just the right amount of Amps, Voltage, etc. Or maybe you can take it apart or something?

You'd also have to get someone to create a mobile network and build the internet. Without them, your phone would just be a camera with a calculator.

Uriel.

Omackeral wrote: »

Chaudeur...

No

TheChosenOne

PARlance wrote: »

You'd also have to get someone to create a mobile network and build the internet. Without them, your phone would just be a camera with a calculator.

So you think that's not good enough for 1866? When people spent ages trying to calculate sin, and you can do it in seconds?

qo2cj1dsne8y4k

I'd join cuman Na ban and hide guns in my pants

And then I'd be the original bad bitch™

Esel

TheChosenOne wrote: »

So you think that's not good enough for 1866? When people spent ages trying to calculate sin, and you can do it in seconds?

Original sin?

riffmongous

TheChosenOne wrote: »

So you think that's not good enough for 1866? When people spent ages trying to calculate sin, and you can do it in seconds?

For like a few hours till the battery dies

mansize

1866?

I'd sent lots of pointless telegrams to other people sending lots of pointless telegrams

Omackeral

Omackeral wrote: »

Chaudeur...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-bbYH_akHg

Speedwell

Simple, I'd die of a treatable health issue that I am being successfully treated for with modern medicine.

Tigger

I have this memorised https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--Uq380p1Y--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/18ml3zw195b0zjpg.jpg
Also I've read jukes Verne mysterious island

xper

TheChosenOne wrote: »

Well I'm just saying that the phone WILL work, just with no connectivity functions. But you can bring it to a prominent electrical scientist of the time who would be able to understand how at least some aspects of the phone work and you'd be able to earn some money.

You really wouldn't. The coincidental proposition here of a smartphone as the representative of modern technology and a jump back of 150 years is an interesting juxtaposition. The smartphone is a culmination of thousands of discoveries and advances in a wide range of scientific fields, major engineering achievements, and profound commercial and social changes, almost entirely all of which occurred after the 1860s.

Back then, they were only getting their heads around using the telegraph and a few 'prominent scientists' were beginning to grapple with the existence of radio waves.

If you managed to get your smartphone to the nearest clever person before the battery died, you'd probably just end up driving him mad. Lets give you a break and say you can demo some over the air communication via an ad hoc connection to a second phone you happened to have with you rather than having to rant like a madman about cell towers, gigahertz, Snapchat and such. (Lets also assume that you are in the low percentage of modern day humans which could even begin to explain coherently the basics of how a smartphone does what it does anyway!)

After picking himself up off the floor, our well dressed clever clogs would probably quickly be able to discern that there is an electrical component to this object's 'behaviour' and he'd be able to grasp the concept of the camera once pointed out to him that that tiny yolk in the corner is a lens but the rest of what it does, how the thing works or how its made would just seem like magic. The materials are completely unknown to him. The miniaturisation is far beyond anything the best watchmaker of the day can achieve. The very idea of making a machine that can be used for multiple diverse tasks is completely foreign to him. The complexity is just overwhelming.

The exception might possibly be Charles Babbage who was still knocking around then with bits of his unfinished, unachievable Analytical Engine scattered around him but he'd probably just punch you out of sheer frustration and jealousy.


So I think you might get a few dinner invites from high society but I don't think you'll be making any money out of it. On the bright, at least your smartphone would be admired. If you'd gone back twice as far, you'd probably be burnt at the stake for witchcraft.

LordSutch

Thing about this thread is that you only travel back 150 years

Whereas in my thread you travel back (or forward) to any year in any time

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057644503

blackbird 49

Not really answering your question here, but if I could go back 150 years I would find any relatives of mine and ask them all the questions I need in relation to the brick walls I have come up against while trying to trace back my ancestors

Chuchote

Uriel. wrote: »

I would invest in upcoming companies like Ford and gamble a lot. Fnuck work.

I'd also invent stuff... Like seafood chowder... Chooowdaaaa

Chowdah? Already well in operation by 1866. But now you've made me hungry. Chowder for breakfast. Mmmmm.

mr_edge_to_you

I would travel the length and breadth of the island teaching people that there's alternatives to potatoes.

I may have been a few years too late of its exactly 150.

shaunr68

I suppose if you could carry a car battery, small solar panel and regulator and cigarette lighter charger along with your mobile phone you could keep it charged for a few years but as pointed out without a mobile network or the internet its use would be limited.

Racking my brains the most important thing we could take to the past would be knowledge, in terms of scientific discoveries and medical progress. For example eradicating smallpox decades earlier could prevent millions of deaths.

So I'd travel with as many volumes of a medical encyclopedia and scientific journals that I could carry.

Speedwell

mr_edge_to_you wrote: »

I would travel the length and breadth of the island teaching people that there's alternatives to potatoes.

I may have been a few years too late of its exactly 150.

You could practice on the Germans. Two extended business trips and I'm "kartoffeled out".

osarusan

I'd use the modern PUA tactics I've learned in AH to have my way with comely maidens. They wouldn't be able to work out why they were so attracted to me.

The flying mouse

Esel wrote: »

No Windows either.

They had got windows in them days, its just most it was the stained variety and only de lords n ladies had it installed ,they were a bugger to keep clean to...

Capt'n Midnight

Esel wrote: »

No Windows either.

They had windows back but not that many as they taxed until 1851.

Widdershins

Oiled paper or hides instead of glass except for the affluent

Depp

due to years of experience wasting time on the internet I know the internal workings of way too many modern inventions so Id probably just go on a mad-one ''inventing stuff'' think the wright brothers first flight only 20 years earlier and in wexford , thinking about it you could potentially invent the tesla coil, depp coil has a nice ring to it! anyone have a time machine?

MEGA BRO WOLF 5000

Pro Hoc Vice wrote: »

Who would you ring? How would you surf the internet?

Surfing the Internet? What is this 1995?

mikhail

PARlance wrote: »

You'd also have to get someone to create a mobile network and build the internet. Without them, your phone would just be a camera with a calculator.

Well this is what a calculator looked like at the time.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=be1EM3gQkAY
Babbage would have been very interested in a general purpose computer that fit in your pocket.

Maximus Alexander

Even as an electronic engineer-cum-software engineer I wouldn't have a hope of reinventing the smartphone. Sure, I have decent knowledge of how it works, but that's a long way from having the level of understanding of all the requisite technologies, the specifics of the hardware, the complexities of the software, and the production of the advanced materials required to actually create it. There's never been a single individual alive who possessed all of the knowledge required to create a smartphone from scratch.

Instead, what I'd do is use the fact that the smartphone is basically magic to them to leverage myself into contact with some wealthy folk. Then I'd be able to do a good job of explaining the design and function of a basic modern four stroke engine and hopefully be able to bring the motor car to market a couple of decades early. After that I'd have enough high level knowledge on a range of topics that I could probably nudge folk already working in those fields towards epiphanies that they wouldn't have otherwise had. I reckon I could make a decent name for myself and a bit of coin.

Esel

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

They had windows back but not that many as they taxed until 1851.

Harry Clarke ftw*


























For the windows.

Samaris

TheChosenOne wrote: »

So imagine you suddenly went back 150 years. You travel back with all the objects you had with you at the moment it happened - example - clothes, phone, etc., this is not important.

I don't know if I could face living in 1866 armed only with a dressing gown, some very holey slippers and a mug of coffee. Although I suppose it's marginally better than facing 1866 without a mug of coffee.

I could go hang around Braunau am Inn in Austria until 1899, wait for little Adolf Hitler to be born, kidnap him and have him adopted by a nice Jewish family and then see what happens in 1939.

FURET

I suppose I'd at first be incredibly frustrated that I never learned any applied science or engineering that could make me incredibly valued and wealthy.

I have a good grasp of history so I might try to go to London and advise the government on foreign policy, or to the nearest learned gentlemen and help them out with making their agriculture more productive.

I'd wager I could also make it as a very good teacher.

The alternatives are miserable.

Blazer

Invest in the stock and property market. So you end up being filthy rich when you're born.
I wonder after you travel back when you're actually born in the future and you travel back in time is it an endless cycle as long as you don't change too much? As in travel back, die, born , travel back, die and so on and on.

SEPT 23 1989

The majority of these posts would be considered the ramblings of mad men and you would end up in the nut house eating flies

Sam Kade

TheChosenOne wrote: »

Well it would work up until it has charge. So you'd have to get Faraday or someone build a charger / battery with just the right amount of Amps, Voltage, etc. Or maybe you can take it apart or something?

So who would be your provider?

Esel

Mad Men you say? People are in.

Sam Kade

I'd tell Custer don't be such an idiot and take the Gatling gun with you, even though he deserved what he got.

FortuneChip

Using what's available, I'd invent a makeshift "George Foreman Grill". I'd insist on calling it a George Foreman.

It's a bit too early for my love of gambling to carry me.

I'd probably write sci-fi stories.

Esel

FortuneChip wrote: »

Using what's available..., I'd probably write sci-fi stories.

I may read your stories - to put myself to sleep. There would be a smile on my face when the archaeologists found me...

learn_more

mr_edge_to_you wrote: »

I would travel the length and breadth of the island teaching people that there's alternatives to potatoes.

Yes, Like oven chips for example.