No problem, just tell them to ask from Baghdad, they should know where it is. :) A jug of wine or vinegar, one electrode of iron, another made of copper, voila… the Baghdad battery.
Any conclusive proof that this was used to produce electricity? Consensus seems to be that it wasn’t.
No conclusive proof. It didn’t have a passthrough for one electrode of the two. It did have remains of acid inside and corrosion on the electrodes. One can speculate whether it was an experimental device, a faulty device or something else entirely (one alchemist trying to replicate another’s secrets and doing it wrong?).
To add insult to the injury, it was lost or stolen during the war in 2003, so more analysis can’t be done until it gets re-discovered. :o
I haven’t heard an alternative hypothesis, though… I try to imagine what else besides electrochemistry would one do with two dissimilar metals in an acid. It ruins the metals, it doesn’t make any known medicine or effective poison, it likely fouls the jug too… for a person to put copper and iron into a jug full of acid, there has to be a reason for doing it…
That all said, an attempted reproduction by Mythbusters, with ten of these jars, using lemon juice as the electrolyte, properly wired in series, did work, producing a voltage of about 4V. And prior to Mythbusters, various other researchers built similar reproductions using different electrolytes, which also produced a voltage. There is evidence to support that if the Baghdad Battery was produced properly, it would have worked as an electric power source.
I have nothing to add to this comment. I just want to make sure everyone knows that “the Baghdad battery” name goes fucking hard.
I think it would actually be easier to wow people than people think. You’d just have to focus on older technology rather than completely modern stuff. If you know that steam engines are a thing, and even vaguely how they work, you can build the king a pump to get running water without having to run massive aqueducts, or a crane to build his massive projects, or any number of directly useful things. An understanding of basic germ theory could set you up to be the best doctor in the world. Or even just a bicycle would probably be quite useful to get around without a horse, and I’m sure anyone could make a rough mockup of a bike.
Steam engines are more complicated than people seem to think. There’s more to it than just boiling some water and voila! They’re pretty much useless without a governor. How many people know how to make this crucial component?
I think you underestimate what it takes to get modern plumbing water tight and easy to manage. Threading, clean threading, teflon, and easy to manage plastic pipes, have all been invented within the last 200 years. Mostly, the last 80.
and that’s just the literal direct infrastructure within a house. Water towers are not simple. Underground pipes are not simple. Civil plumbing and waste management is not simple.
Yeah, even electricity is easy to explain. You just rotate a high quality magnet within a coil of thin high quality copper wire. Easy.
Problems are:
- How do you make a high quality magnet?
- How do you purify copper fine enough?
- How do you make a spool of the copper wire?
- How do you make the bearings for the shaft?
Efficiency would certainly be pretty rough but wire’s been around since about 2,800 BC. Copper would be the way to go if you could manage it but any conductive metal would get the job done to some extent.
Finding a reasonable safe insulator might be a little bit of a chore.
Soft metal bushings have also been around for a really long time.
Efficiency on magnets would be difficult, You might want to just use a really huge battery pile and electromagnets.
The manufacturing tolerances for the axle the wire and everything would be a fight.
I don’t think you have a chance in hell of producing anything in the same efficiency range is what we have today, but compared to not having electricity at all… It might be worthwhile.
The thing is even if you make the electricity what the hell are you going to use it for? For light bulbs are going to need glass blowing in inert gases. You’re going to need diodes resistors capacitors and transistors to do radio, You could probably usher in tubes but that shi*'s almost black magic as it is.
Nah, problems arise much earlier. Metals are expensive (proper steel is a thing of the 1700s, try getting proper coke) and your claims might be considered too outlandish for funding of home industrialisation, even making the needed tools might take ages.
Depending on when you are, science might even be considered evil, useless, unless you have very clear, direct and easy use cases (e.g. horse collar, compass, wheelbarrow).
Interesting could be the printing press for problem solving.
Proving electricity is easy, since even static electricity is relatively unexplained for a long time. You already know that metals are great conductors, hell, even what conductance roughly is. You know lead acid batteries. Simple conceptual motor and lead acid batteries together with printing press is probably enough to industrialise many societies early.
Don’t know to get acid though.
Actually, I think you just got what you should make first - a simple Gutenberg press. You could probably make it all the way back in the Bronze age, using copper or brass for the stamps and the rest is just wood and rope. You’d just need a basic knowledge of levers and screws, and suddenly you have (relatively) mass-production media.
And you need knowledge of the local language they might not even have a written form yet. No point in a printing press when you don’t have symbols to print.
Concentrate citrus fruit juice
Depends where you travel back to. If you’re in Europe, then good luck lol.
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Copper is the easy part. Get it hot enough and you’ll end up with high quality copper… Sourcing the copper is much more difficult.
Finding magnets is somewhat simple, you just need some iron… That’s a lot more difficult. Iron smelting is way harder than copper smelting (especially without electricity).
Making bearings is also difficult. It requires not only iron smelting but also high precision machining.
High quality copper isn’t that easy to come by.
lol one of the oldest texts in the history of our species is a complaint.
Modern stuff is hard.
and that’s just the literal direct infrastructure within a house. Water towers are not simple. Underground pipes are not simple. Civil plumbing and waste management is not simple.
The romans did manage to build a nice system, tho. I hear the persians also managed one.
But it doesn’t have to be up to modern standards, and certainly doesn’t have to be with modern materials. Get the local cooper to make your pipes and reservoir with pitch-sealed wood. Or make it out of stone, or cast copper, or whatever they use to store water anyway. If it’s Roman or post-Roman, they’ve already had some experience with running water anyway, that wouldn’t be the impressive bit.
Threading and such is mostly useful for mass-manufacturing standard pipes and using it everywhere, but at least at first you’d just be doing it for a rich/powerful person or two, where you could do something labour-intensive and unscalable.
I’m not saying that you would get a perfect, modern system straight away, but if you can convince the people to give you the benefit of the doubt through a prototype or two, you could make something that works well enough. That would be what I’d be concerned about, even if you can magic away the language barrier, they’d likely just think you’re mad.
Language isn’t too much of a problem depending on the region. Assuming this is Rome or shortly before, Koine Greek and Latin are well enough known that you can learn it after a few years of study if you’re good with languages.
If you know that you get dropped in 14th Century England you could also prep and study Middle English since the Canterbury Tales is the first book written in that language. And we still have surviving copies.
Yeah, but I’m assuming you just get dumped there with minimal preparation. Otherwise you could also study up on early technology and know exactly what to make and how to make it to be impressive. And the ‘convincing them you’re not mad’ problem still exists.
I can’t even draw a bike.
But first, you need all the guns (and other modern weaponry) to gun down anyone trying to kill you. Might be useful to make them listen to you as well.
found the redneck.
apparently common sense survival in an unfamiliar hostile place is a sign of being a redneck
First thing coming to mind being how to fight other people is very redneck, yes. Only emotionally retarded people think like that.
You must be fun at parties 🙄
Eh. Like 90%+ of everybody who ever lived in pre-Industrial civilization was a slave or a serf or something like that. What does that say about the other 1% that “owned” them? And if your goal is explicitly to bring lots of revolutionary technologies, you’re probably going to disrupt a lot of established power structures. People in power don’t tend to take kindly to that, and as the ultimate outsider, you’ll be the perfect scapegoat for anything that goes wrong.
It’s dumb to think only about fighting, and this specific scenario isn’t something that you’re ever going to be able to win through brute force alone. Also, using guns “to make them listen to you”, as the original comment said, sounds pretty evil depending on how it’s done. (E.G. Menace and threaten anyone questioning you: Evil. Gain favour with the royal army by providing guns, then ask for funding for medical research: Less evil.) But ultimately, it’s reasonable to be prepared for other people to act in bad faith.
this person gets it
Hopefully they will understand modern day English
trebuchets now exist in 3500 BC
gun powder enters the chat
Fossil Fuels is typing…
The best a human can do without the knowledge of how it fully works is be able to push them in the right direction. Depending how far back you go you’d either be considered a god or a witch 🤣. Humans man we are strange.
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You know, a fun project would be compiling an instruction book for elevating/fast forwarding technology just in case someone does get sent back in time.
I want this for when climate collapse destroys modern civilization and the survivors are left to rebuild society without the benefit of global supply chains or information infrastructure.
Download wikipedia. Its not only possible, but its actually easy. There are some apps for it, see Kiwix and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download. Just bring a couple phones and some solar panels for when they run out of charge.
I’ve put a bit of thought into this and I feel that even if you could bring every blueprint for every technology ever made onto a computer with 10 backups, you would still need to be extremely lucky on whether you get people skilled enough to recreate those technologies.
You’d need the social skills to demonstrate technological improvements (say, a better axe) without causing everyone to freak out and call you a demon. You’d also have to keep your phones and charging devices secret until after you’ve recruited a few technophiles because otherwise someone is going to break them accidentally when they confiscate them for one reason or another.
Basically you need to recruit a few smart people who can be trusted and get them on your side. You might even want to funnel all your “inventions” through them to keep the heat off you, and this is assuming you end up in a culture that would even value technological advancement.
this is assuming you end up in a culture that would even value technological advancement.
People value their friends and family not dying, and the murdering raiders from neighbouring tribes being kept at bay. And people that don’t value that don’t tend to last very long.
You’d need the social skills to demonstrate technological improvements (say, a better axe) without causing everyone to freak out and call you a demon.
…Starting with an axe would be nice. The lumberfolk would appreciate it, surely. But then what happens when the old blacksmith blames your witchcraft for the crops failing next year, or for the village chief’s child falling ill? So maybe teach the blacksmiths too, so they also benefit from you— I’m sure they’ll love having some upstart come in and tell them how to do their jobs.
You’re an outsider, no matter what, and you’re never going to completely look like them or sound like them or act like them— Can we really think that any amount of social skills will be enough to keep you safe, when they might just be determined to hate you for what you are?
Maybe start with a combination of military and medical technology. Show them a crude crossbow; when they see the next raid of Goths or Aztecs or Mongols or Vikings or Peloponnesians or whomever being repelled before they even reach the gates, they’ll come to appreciate it sooner or later… Their enemies are against their gods, so if you helped defend them from their enemies, you must be sent by their gods. Disgustingly, hating the same out-group is a great way to keep yourself safe in any given in-group, whether at work or at war. Medicine’s probably trickier, because if you fail to save somebody then some people will probably blame you for their death. But if you make it clear that you can’t stop fate from running its course, and you start with some basic stuff, they’ll probably come to appreciate that their friends aren’t dying as much from infections anymore too.
Fear of death has always been sadly the strongest motivator for embracing technological change. Modern aviation, computing, and nuclear science all came after WWII; and “anti-vax” movements only thrive in countries that have already essentially eradicated the concerned diseases. It’ll be harder for them to crucify somebody whom they can see is standing between them and death.
Clock of the long now
I don’t know why they put just one zero in front of years. That just makes the clock slightly longer, and it’s still insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
02023 in years only is good until 99999, then you’d need to prepend another zero.
It’s a constant symbolic reminder, and still a 10X scope increase.
If you want to be pedantic about making “the clock slightly longer”, you might as well say “I don’t see why they don’t write their dates out in base 62. Then they could make the clock shorter by writing
wDinstead of2023”. The point is that everyone who sees “02023” can have a bit of an “oh shit” moment where they instantly understand what it means.
We could send them to the end of the galaxy to compile an encyclopedia of all human knowledge but they’d secretly be there to start the next iteration of civilization through the foolproof strategy of not doing much and just letting the pre-calculated history take its course.
You just gave Hari an idea…
Hail Seldon
Or we could just fly around in space on a religious drug trip until we find a planet with some worms that make some freaken killer drugs.
That sounds like it would cause a major succession crisis and a galaxy-wide jihad.
We will need one against those sentient mitosis using beings from another dimension. The Kinnison bloodline won’t be enough!
There’s a couple of books that do this: How to Invent Everything, and How Rebuild Civilization.
Just spin a magnet in a copper coil.
BOOM! Electricity.
How do you make a magnet?
Coil a lead wire around a big full metal cylinder (must be magnetizable) and attach one end to a big ass antenna and the other in the ground, then wait for lightning to strike the antenna. Although the amount of power will probably melt everything.
Or you can just read this: https://sciencing.com/make-super-strong-permanent-magnets-6520830.html
Alright it’s decided, you’re the guy we’re sending back to teach Jesus how to build gaming PCs from scratch.
That’s how a religion is built around RGB.
Fuck that, I’d rather study Nicolas Tesla’s work and go back as a fucking electric wizard and a demi-god, shooting lightning from my fingertips.
Expose molten ferrous metal to … a magnet.
Welp…
Magnets are created by running an electrical current through a material, so there is no need to have a ‘first magnet’. This is happening ‘naturally’ in the earth core, in the sun, and in other stars. (https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/565245/how-was-the-first-magnet-made)
So you need to look around and find some magic rocks.
Natural magnets, called “lodestones”, were found in iron ores (magnetite) from the ancient region of Magnesia, hence the name “Magnet”. (https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/615500/how-did-magnets-first-come-about)
Maybe the sword with the stone was just a big lodestone with a sword sized hole in it. Just throwing that out there.
And one more cool fact…
Based on his discovery of an Olmec artifact (a shaped and grooved magnetic bar) in North America, astronomer John Carlson suggests that lodestone may have been used by the Olmec more than a thousand years prior to the Chinese discovery.[23] Carlson speculates that the Olmecs, for astrological or geomantic purposes, used similar artifacts as a directional device, or to orient their temples, the dwellings of the living, or the interments of the dead.[23] Detailed analysis of the Olmec artifact revealed that the “bar” was composed of hematite with titanium lamellae of Fe2–xTixO3 that accounted for the anomalous remanent magnetism of the artifact.[24] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodestone)
With electricity, duh
Fucking magnets
Electricity is easy to make though… a couple magnets and some copper wire.
Easy materials to get from your local 1st century hardware store
they’d probably have non-shitty copper by then, but magnets? thems witchcraft
Probably easier to use a lemon and copper plates. Not sure what you’d connect to it though
Use it for electroplating/etching, that’s cool as shit
lodestones lol, people have known about those for aaaaaaaaaages
And don’t forget that you need to demonstrate that it’s producing a current. Just get a light bulb, right??
probably go with a hand-crank zapper or something. it’s tricky to do much without resistors and capacitors.
Zap the royalty to prove your point and get flayed and executed for it
Plating a metal object with a different metal would probably be the simplest, impressive thing. Or just heating a thin wire?
If you can make a generator you can make a motor, just connect them together and have one move when you spin the other
The could do the same with a belt, go away with your flash nonsense youngling
Depends on if Ea-nasir was still in business.
Most people dont even know how to make wires.
really? isnt it just forcing/extruding hot metal through a die?
Don’t forget it’ll need to be covered with an insulator, else your coils would short circuit and not producing any current. So you’ll need some chemistry to produce insulator thin enough to create your generator.
It is, but the ancient method is tedious as fuck. It was basically just pulling a piece through dozen of gradually smaller holes, by hand. I dont think you could do one pass extrusion without all of the precision machinery needed to manufacture such machine. But I aint a blacksmith, I just saw the process in some documentary a while ago.
No :)
How do you make the die?
Big-ass piece of cast iron with a little hole in it.
If you can convince them you know the end product I’m sure the king can point you to his metal workers and in a lot of cases come up with a solution.
Also, it’s labor intensive but I think you can beat it into wire or use some other methods.
If the king says to the blacksmith “make that copper long ans skinny” he can probably make it happen.
What tools do you use to precisely work cast iron into a small hole to create your die?
1st century? probably with diamonds.
How would you buy copper with no money? It’s not like you can exchange your modern money to their currency. So first you need to find a job and any good paying job is probably protected by guilds and you don’t even speak their language so good luck finding a mentor who will offer an apprenticeship. You will be a peasant. Nothing more than a subsistence farmer who has to rent the land and give half his yield to the local lord. Hunting? Killing anything bigger than a fowl will get you in trouble since big game is property of the lord.
Also copper ore doesn’t lie freely on the ground. You need to mine for that shit and be lucky that there is a source in the vicinity, since you can’t travel very far. Can’t buy a horse with no money.
And if you found a source you need to convince an entire community to help you mine for copper. You sure as hell can’t do it alone. Good luck convincing them when everyone is busy tending their crops to prepare for the winter. And you don’t even speak their language.
I imagine that the best way to make money would be if you manage to build a rm rudimentary still.
I feel like moonshine would be relatively easy to do and a great way to make profit of no one kills you before.
Distilled alcohol is quite rudimentary to produce but only appeared late in history. Plus it is great for leisure application, food conservation or medicine.
How do you get the materials for a still with no money?
i guess that if we’re going to go the fantasy route, then I’d just steal everything I needed - the strong do as they please and the weak submit, after all. violence is the only language I’d need to speak
There’s always the world’s oldest profession…
Good luck convincing them when everyone is busy tending their crops to prepare for the winter.
Just sprinkle some bird poop or bat guano or whatever other nitrogen and phosphorus-rich gunk onto it
when they aren’t looking.
You can literally mine lodestone and copper. Ancient people have mined those two things since antiquity. Where do you think it comes from now? Fairies?
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You literally could just go dig some yourself while they’re away and procure it that way.
What do you think copper ore looks like? What tools would you use?
Ancient mining was a punishment, generally a death sentence. It’s hard work often overseen by a slave master.
Copper ore isn’t concentrated copper either a lot of ore goes into a little copper. There’s a reason only the really wealthy had copper items.
Well, in this scenario we’d presumably have our electronic devices with us anyway, so it’s honestly a moot point.
It’s amazing what some people here think would be such a simple task in the ancient world.
Bring a live translation device, and program it with whatever the expected language is. That alone would be magic to them. And you don;t need to go to a copper mine, there were markets for processed copper. Pulling it into wire is just a case of roughly forming it into a cylinder, then pulling that cylinder through successively smaller holes. A local smith could help you with that.
And then hope they don’t kill you for being a witch.
Copper wire: yes. Magnets, get lodestones
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You can induce voltage on more than just copper you know. Or maybe you don’t know. You probably don’t know.
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Ever wonder why it goes bronze age and then iron age? It’s because it’s a minor miracle humanity discovered how to smelt iron. Iron requires temperatures higher than you can achieve with just wood. Iron absorbs carbon and sulfur making it worthless (in the wrong mixtures).
The process is complex and resource intensive.
Assuming a bronze age civilization, copper or tin is the best you can hope for. Finding a magnet is going to be difficult because there’s not really ferromagnetic materials available. In the modern era the most common material is iron.
Magnets, how do they work?
Me: The opposite of B, the opposite of B, plus or minus a square root…
Them: What does that mean?
Me: I have no idea.
X equals negative b, plus or minus the square root, of b squared minus 4 a c, all over 2 a
Thanks a lot. Now that song is stuck in my head.
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Same tbh. Christian homeschooling is very common where I live. It’s borderline abuse imo
I’d actually be able to teach them how to make it if they have copper and magnets, since I know how to make a simple generator. They’d be SOL on how to use it though, because I don’t know how to make something entirely from raw materials that would require electricity. Which means they also wouldn’t know I am creating it with the generator… 🤔 Uh… Shit.
This is actually kinda wild to think about and I hadn’t considered it before. Making electricity is easy! Using it is actually more complicated.
You could give people a mild shock. “Here. Hold these while I crank this thingy.” Could be good for some lulz. Or get you burned as a witch.
I mean, the Baghdad Battery’s pretty old. We’ve had electricity for a while, just nobody knew what it was or how to use it. Just like us now.
Baghdad Battery? Probably not a battery:
Awful Archaeology Ep. 6: The Baghdad Battery by Miniminuteman
Baghdad Battery 2 - non-electric boogaloo also by MiniminutemanI love Minuteman. His series on Graham Hancock’s bullshit show earlier this year was terrific.
Joe Rogan had a good line back before he became… whatever he is now. Anyways, the line is “if I dropped you off on a deserted island, how long before you could send me an email?”
Why is email the metric?
Well you’d need to invent mining, metallurgy, machining, manufacturing, radio waves, computing, computer programming, electricity, and a slew of other technologies that took thousands of years and millions of people to create.
You can make a generator… so then stretch wires to a distance and put a motor on the end of it (similar to the generator). Basically blow their minds in that you could transfer power over distance without a mechanical coupling.
Making an “ouch” device or basic heater is something I could do.
Even a battery I could make a simple alumium air battery cell. Or lemon battery. But I’d be viewed like a sorcerer asking for foreign ingredients like salt, aluminum, copper and zinc.
Aluminum would be nearly impossible to obtain, it’s actually my preferred grab in a hypothetical “You’re going back in time and can take one thing” situation
Yep, it was worth more than gold before modern methods made it easy to isolate.
I swear the Americans remove another letter from the word aluminium every time I look away
Yanks are a sneaky bunch.
it’s all the uranum from the atomic bomb tests
Depends on how far back and where you went. Whoever made the Baghdad Battery probably wouldn’t even be impressed.
I feel like you could still give science a head start by giving them rough ideas of how things work, like penicillin and steam power and whatnot
Even if you don’t know all the ins and puts you can give them something to go off of to develop the technology faster
Ayyyyy gotta love some quick typing typos lol
“Science” ≠ Technology!
If you give them the technology without giving them stuff like empiricism and cultural acceptance of critical thinking, they’ll just worship it like any other faith, and stagnate for the next thousand years.
Inversely, you don’t even need to give them too much technology, because if you just give them stuff like evidence-based medicine, the printing press, rigorous experimentation and reproducibility, and a couple institutes dedicated to the craft, plus a couple starting points, then they’ll figure it on their own soon enough (assuming an overall stable civilization).
Most likely, people would consider you to be another wacko shouting at passersby.
Or even more likely, you drink some stanky water that your body doesn’t know how to deal with and die within the first week.
Show, don’t tell. And get your shots before you go.
If you couldn’t prove it, things probably wouldn’t go well for you.
Even if you could prove it, it would still go badly in a lot of places in a lot of times.
What do you mean by that? You sound a lot like a witch
Always as been
You could probably make explosives from manure. Use that to conquer a small community and make yourself the leader. And start a rebellion against the local lord and become the king. Then you have the resources and slaves to find copper and magnets and shit. Problem is the massive language barrier. Their language is just gibberish to us and vice versa.
I don’t want to type out that thing you said, because I don’t want to end up on a list, but idk how to do that.
The Anarchist Cookbook can show you the way.
Ibic Manda.
(This is The Way)
I said I don’t want to end up on a list.
Then you have the resources and slaves to find… magnets and shit.
They already had magic in the old days though. They used to have to fight dragons and witches and shit back then.
You’d kill them off before they’d get a chance, though
And all the germs we carry to which we’re already immune.
They’d actually kill off any would be time traveling conqueror pretty quickly with smallpox.
Definitely take your smallpox vaccine before time traveling. They still make them, so it shouldn’t be too much hassle.
Aren’t those only available in developing countries and via the military?
You can get it in Canada. You need to give a good reason to get it, but I’m sure time travel would qualify. If not, just say you’re a laboratory worker researching Smallpox, and they’ll give you the vaccine.
Man I gotta move to Canada. The US government gives me jack squat for time travel.
The IRS sends you a letter reminding you that time travel counts as being abroad and any earnings you make are still taxable.
I don’t know if they would be willing to give you the smallpox vaccine in order to go back in time and totally change history so none of the people involve in giving you the vaccine would ever have been born.
🤔 Not a bad plan.
Couldn’t chickenpox vaccine suffice?
Man Makes Dynamite Out of His Own Pee (It’s Cody)
Go back in time with a 4th grade science book from 1997 and be a fucking wizard.
This was the (side) plot of Army of Darkness
He basically was a wizard in Army of Darkness. He made a robot hand in a blacksmith’s shop.
