100 years back in time

[Skaperen]

you suddenly get transported back in time to the year 1919 with your usual clothing and your fully charged smartphone. what will you do?

[jetsam]

Am I in the same place I started from? 1919 was one of those very bad years, I think. Spanish flu...

[Skaperen]

you might be in the same place. what would you do if you were? what would you do if you were in some other place like the town one of your direct ancestors was in at that time?

[jetsam]

Well, I think I'd sit right down and have myself a good think about things! Also, I'd take stock of my possessions. Am I wearing pants? If I was near civilization, I think I'd stuff all the modern money in my shoe so I didn't get arrested for having fake currency.

Does the cell phone work? Is there a signal? Can I call out / call home? Does it still play Angry Birds and that stupid fruit slicing game? Uhh.... and flashlight! It can be a very complex flashlight if it fails all of the other tests...

Edit: ...and here's the plan. Go towards the biggest most anonymous city in the region and try to find pick-up labor or a menial job and a lodging house for short term needs. For the longer term, I might head to the university and present myself as an assistant to the professor of electrical engineering and/or pharmacy. If I could find a sympathetic person I could be honest to about my plight: we could debate the ethics of inventing or not inventing antibiotics and semiconductors 10 years and 35 years before their time... then there's nuclear physics, which I know little about, but more than enough to cause much havoc in the world.

[Artim]

Turn the phone off, it's no good here except as a camera. My best foster dad was 5 years old in 1919... I think I would go see how his childhood was, and try not to get polio along the way.

I might try to warn leaders about the second world war, the nuclear age, etc. And try not to be thrown in an asylum along the way!

[sdsurfer]

Get a job somewhere and scrape together whatever I could, then invest it all in Ford Motor Company and General Electric. Then I would take that phone to a patent office and register a patent.

[uRock]

I would make a lot of money. Everything else that I would do would be too political to talk about here.

[Frogs Hair]

I would make a lot of money. Everything else that I would do would be too political to talk about here.

Make lots of money in the stock market and convert it into cash before 1929. I would have foreknowledge various events that could be profitable. :)

[uRock]

Make lots of money in the stock market and convert it into cash before 1929. I would have foreknowledge various events that could be profitable. :)

Yup. There'd be a lot of people scratching their heads when the young me got millions, if not billions, when he turned 21 from a random trust fund.

[Shibblet]

Three words. "Grey's Sports Almanac."

[mclark2145]

I think I would start writing short stories so I could get enough cred to be able to write books and have them published. They would all be pitched as fiction, and then I would, I guess, start making people nervous how events essentially identical to what I wrote about kept coming true.

[Skaperen]

Get a job somewhere and scrape together whatever I could, then invest it all in Ford Motor Company and General Electric. Then I would take that phone to a patent office and register a patent.

... which would then expire in 1936.

[Skaperen]

I think I would start writing short stories so I could get enough cred to be able to write books and have them published. They would all be pitched as fiction, and then I would, I guess, start making people nervous how events essentially identical to what I wrote about kept coming true.

or, your books would have so many people thinking that way that it would change history like causing those events to not come true.

[sdsurfer]

... which would then expire in 1936.

Yes but see "General Electric." That would then become G.E.'s problem . . . after selling them the patent. :-D CHA-CHING CHA-CHING! :-D

[TheFu]

I did some research about where I live now and where my ancestors were in 1920.

I'd pull the battery out of the phone. If I had a charger, that would simplify things. Without a charger, it would be harder since I don't know the 4-pin setup on the microUSB port for charging. If I knew I was going in advance, I'd take a photo or save the USB pin diagram to the device. While I'm at it, I'd grab a copy of wikipedia and put that on a 256G microSD card. Concentrating on math, science, engineering topics. With the ability to recharge the phone, it would become like an oracle, yes? The knowledge would be more important than the phone.

Both here and at direct ancestor locations are pretty rural. I'm too old to do labor, so I'd have to lie about my beliefs, find a church and help out there for food until finding some way to earn and get to a railroad, then to a city. Would likely take a year to save that much. I could walk to a city with 6000 people and rail station here in a few days. Doing that isn't possible for the location of my ancestors, but a rail station is only 80 miles away.

I'm trained as an engineer, but just a little too young to have used slide rules. Would need a course on that and probably would be most useful at a ship builder due to my aerospace engineering degree. Not much need for a rocket scientist in 1919 and aircraft engineering ... well, it wasn't paying well then.

[jetsam]

Electrical and communications engineering were the hot new fields... Places were being connected for the first time. Expansion was everywhere. The first wired networks were being crafted out of cable and determination. The fatality rate among that first generation of electrical linemen must have been fantastically high by our standards today.

[Skaperen]

Electrical and communications engineering were the hot new fields... Places were being connected for the first time. Expansion was everywhere. The first wired networks were being crafted out of cable and determination. The fatality rate among that first generation of electrical linemen must have been fantastically high by our standards today.

and "Tesla" was a different name back then.

even today, the fatality rate of linemen (#1) remains higher than that of law enforcement officers (#2). a friend of mine (lived across the street from me when we were young kids) lost his 20 y/o son that way last year. electricity does not give you even the slightest chance to get out of the way.

and it's not the amperage that kills you, it's the sudden extreme heat.

[PJs Ronin]

I have had a somewhat similar experience where I decided to up stakes and head for the USA with a motorcycle. For me this was not too dissimilar to a trip back 100 years in time. So, what should I take with me? I spread all my possessions out on the lounge room floor and systematically went through everything looking for "must have" and "want to have" items.

In the end the "must have" pile only contained my birth certificate, motorcycle rego papers, current driver's license, and four photos of 5 people who meant a great deal to me. The "want to have" pile was simply an Aussie flag, discharge papers from the military and a small metal container of personal jewelry.

Within 4 months of arriving in the USA I had my own mom and pop computer repair store and living well.

The only thing that will work for you if you go back 100 years is knowledge... everything else will get you killed, thrown in jail or ostracized.

[bernard010]

Find an honest job. Save money. Avoid my grandmother which would of been 18 yeas old. Celebrate the end of world war 1 the year before. Buy some real clothes. Invent a few things that would be new even in today's standards. That would put today 100 years advanced in technology.

[guiverc]

100 years ago I think where I am now was apple orchard. If no farmer was around, I'd guess I'd start by grabbing an apple. I'd also head west, as I'm not far from a pretty good place to see Melbourne in the distance...

My 'smartphone' - I find little use for that now, so I'd be tempted to throw it, but I may find a use for it so I'd probably keep (it may help prove I'm not insane when I use speech or other things that mean nothing today, but had different meanings back then, I'd also marvel at why it's fully-charged!!?) ...

My DP/IT/computing background is probably of no use, my other main qualification is in accounting which doesn't thrill me anymore (did it ever?). I'm now in the era of steam, so I'd probably start heading ~SW to where the electric tramway got pulled up many years before and follow it towards the rail line (south), then look for a library for a quick history refresher (what I have already is very macro/general/global in focus, I'd need to narrow down to more local).

I'd keep my eyes open for a blue (UK) police box ... maybe I can hitch-hike a ride back to my own time zone...

[Artim]

I would introduce my favorite modern music, and hope to not be cast out of society. And I would try to change things for foster kids and hope the changes influence my own "future" experience for the better.

[wolftrax]

I never had a smartphone so I would start with trying top figure out how to use it for calling someone for help.

[Skaperen]

@wolftrax who you gonna call in 1919? the local inbound emergency call center? you'll get zero bars. the few ham radio operators around won't even be able to detect 800 MHz if they were right next to you.

@Artim maybe they'll set up a new educational system that leads you down a different path of Windows instead of Ubuntu.

[wolftrax]

I would be so desperate I would try call anyone for help getting me back home to my time zone. I cant use the phone for anything anyway so might as well give it a try :)

[Skaperen]

i guess if you are not yet sure of your situation you might try it. it will fail. but you figure out what your situation is. are you going to hang on to the phone? are you going to turn it off to save the battery? are you going to toss it because it is useless? are you going to try to find Thomas Edison to help you figure out how to charge it?

[wolftrax]

when calling for help fails I will turn it off to save battery and then find thomas edison and show him this wonderful gadget and inspire him to invent something that can recharge it and make it possible to call for help.

if I cant find thomas edison then I will just sit down somewhere and cry my eyes out hoping someone will help me get back to my own timezone. (or at least give me something to eat and drink and a place to sleep for the night )

[Skaperen]

if you find Thomas Edison you'll also need to look for his adversary, Nikola Tesla, to find a way to boost your UHF signal across the realm of time. maybe this is the real reason he built those big towers.

[wolftrax]

time traveling seems to be very hard work :)

[Skaperen]

yeah. i wish it were as easy as an app. we'd just need to be sure we keep get back to my time installed on every phone we have, just in case.

[wolftrax]

the guy who write this app could make a lot of money :)

[marokah]

@Artim your idea was so cool! I might do what u're thinking too!