It's so easy how is everyone so stupid. I'd invent the train afterward and drive around everyone saying "you're so fucking stupid I'm not even good at this and I did it".
I'd have invented the beatles like 10 years before you. It took England until 1960 lmao get out of here.
I'm teaching cavemen grindcore and stopping humankind right there
Why would Ancient Romans, dignified people, want to listen to your The Cure when I started a side project and invented house music in the third century BCE? They even have drums and shit so I won't have to teach every single Roman how to DJ like it's hard or something.
If I time-traveled there and tried to do the same I imagine it'd start with a long and confused explanation to a blacksmith on what I need and end with either me exploding in a pink mist due to the boiler being improperly made, or me being burned by priests for being a witch in the end.
Also, related: in ancient times they built aeolipiles - very basic steam power contraptions (used today to demonstrate steam power in schools), based on the writings of an Egyptian scientist more than 2 centuries before Christ Era. Historians aren't 100% on this but they're pretty sure they were simply seen as a curiosity or a temple marvel.
#1 I'd invent steel. It's iron and carbon. Everyone born before steel was automatically dumber than I am
#2 If I saw Ctesibius I'd say "lmao put that on a wagon you idiot fuck I have to think of everything for you people" and then I'd invent cars.
one does not simply invent steal.
First, you have to invent high temerature ceramics to build a furnace, then you have to obtain a fule source that can get hot enough (typically coal, charcoal isn't enough, even with compressed air)
and to work it you need to iteratively build up good tools.
Better off with Bronze at first because pre 1700 steel-making is shit outside a few specific places, most of which had shitty iron ore.
Find a bell maker (or a cannon maker if late enough) and give them the recipe for Manganese Bronze. They'll know what to do
I'd literally go door-to-door explaining manganese bronze to these people like they're children and they still wouldn't make a better cannon than I could. I'm sitting here with the idea for the 8.8 cm Flak 18/36/37/41 in my head.
What is really crazy is they didn't invent hot air balloons until the 1700s. That shit could have been invented thousands of years ago, all you need is fire and cloth.
Especially when you consider stuff such as Chinese lanterns - they were even used for military signalling as far back as 200 AD.
And the fact they were using manned kites at the time (mostly to fuck with people as they had no landing methods.)
I would have been telling people this in Sumerian times and none of you idiots would have listened to me.
They probably thought about it and said "wow this sounds like an awful idea" and then a couple of french morons decided to go for it
Some people think that the Nazca Lines were meant to be viewed from hot air balloons
If I were born in ancient times I would simply demand a steam train which the free market would then supply to me. It's basic economics folks!
>be me
>Mesopotamia
>just wrote Das Kapital Volume 2
>people don't get it
>idiots
>"where's volume 1?"
>"what's capital?"
>libs don't know anything about politics and yet they think they should run society
chilling in pre-sumer mesopotamia
write some book called state and revolution
"Wtf is a state"
Mfw noone read my book
Fucked up the formatting how do you do this?
something people rarely aprisheate. There have been super-intelligent people in every generation of humanity since the dawn of time. the reason we didn't invent things sooner?
Tool precision and material science can't simply be thought up or replicated from scratch.
the tool precision and metallurgy needed to make manufacturing paper and ink at scale (which finally enabled the vast proliferation of the knowledge that enabled the industrial age.) had to be iteratively achieved as we slowly built up the ability to get things hotter, get better ore from deeper in the earth, and built things with tighter and tighter tolerances. even with modern-day skill mastery and knowledge, it would take a lifetime to get from scratch to something even close to tool-grade steel.
Tool precision and material science can’t simply be thought up or replicated from scratch.
I could literally invent the metric system in my head right now. It's ten smaller. There you go ancient world I did that one for free.
So, I feel like perhaps this is a bit but...
that's not how this works. invent an accurate set of gauge blocks, a micromitor, or even a "simple" weight scale and we'll talk.
That would take me a week tops if it doesn't require maths. It took humanity how long?
no, it would likely take you a lifetime of iteration. It doesn't matter if you know the maths to calculate what you need unless you can reliably build and measure things intricate itmes are nigh impossible.
I wouldn't even need those things unless I wanted to invent rockets or something. Those are crutches used by guys who didn't get it until centuries after I would have.
I would have invented Steam, imagine how much money you could've made in 2000 years worth of summer sales
I have no idea how steam engines work though besides the basic idea that you make some rocks hot and the smoke pushes stuff around?
I'd be fucked
You nake the container and then boil the water and then make the steam turn a thing. So easy and it took them forever.
There actually were simple steam engines in ancient times, it just took a while for metallurgy to advance to the point where you could make one that did a useful amount of work.
It's super fucking easy actually, just heat up some wood to make charcoal, then heat up the charcoal to melt the metal while mixing in a different bit of charcoal to make it into steel. It's like these people have never played around with Minecraft mods!
Well someone else pointed out that usually slaves were way easier and cheaper. That industrial revolution thing was a real complicated and interesting transition that made a super complicated and actually useful steam engine profitable.
- Build a big metal receptacle, strong enough, entirely closed off except for a tube near the top that'll be the exhaust. Also add a safety valve (a valve that'll open only if the pressure inside gets too great, but at a level below that where pressure makes your receptacle explode) to not die.
- Fill it with water (not 100% filled).
- Plug your exhaust tube to a contraption like this, again out of strong enough metal. Steam goes in at the top tube there.
- Heat your big water-filled receptacle, ideally with coal or another high-energy-density fuel.
- You've got a train :traingang: or alternatively use the rotating or lateral movement of the contraption above for mills and stuff. But a train is better.
The "Strong enough" being the operative problem. Probably can't do a Walking beam engine before the developments in metallurgy from early cannons, if not the 17th century metallurgical analysis of Wootz steel by European scientists.
Jet rotator engines work just fine though.
Metallurgy isn't the only problem, although it helps. Steel isn't strictly necessary unless you want safe high pressure and high heat boilers for more power and efficiency and fewer explosions. You could make almost an entire steam locomotive out of iron or bronze but it wouldn't be as light or durable or safe.
You also need technology like metal casting, forging, and precision machining. Plus enough industrial capacity to produce miles of nearly uniform tracks.
Maybe you could go straight from jet rotator engines to steam turbines and skip over piston engines entirely, but that would require a lot of the same technologies.
I'm going to write this one down. What's pressure and is there is a number for that or do I just write P on the formula?
I would have invented polyester so I could wear a track suit and steal your romantic partner while you were being a steam dork.
Do you think they'd go for a future Slav if the inventor of oral sex is standing right there in front of them? No, no they wouldn't. They'd get in my steam wagon and I'd invent the female orgasm just to copyright it before anyone else could.
I’m gonna go with the opposite angle to all (correct) comrades about precision, purity of steel and tools. Steam engine doesn’t make sense without vast amounts of raw material, meaning colonies generally. Your window of opportunity is basically Ancient Rome for 200 years, and they didn’t have easy mineable coal nor pure steel available, and then england in 1600.
I would be the absolute best at colonialism in ancient times. No contest. I know where all the best resources are and would invent guns so that I can be responsible for the spice trade, colombian exchange, and land conquest of North America. The Spanish took centuries because they were uneducated.
But you cannot make guns without steel, coming back to furnace issue. Also I sincerely doubt you know how to make saltpeter from bat droppings lol
Do you seriously think I wouldn't invent guano islands and monroe doctrine imperialism to invade those islands? That would be like day 3 while everyone else is busy dying of infections.
Yeah, I do, you even think it’s islands instead of caves and manure latrines. Also you would be just as vulnerable to infections, shoveling shit:)
If I lived in the time of the Black Death, I would simply invent penicillin.
No no, you're just like the entirety of the ancient world. Bat guano means dangerous exposure to airborne plague. Guano islands are what smart guys like me know about. I would have gone to the Tang Dynasty and said "my way is so much better why are you this bad".
I would have invented the glory hole and we'd all be a lot happier
they definitely already had that. you just need a hole, a dick, and someone who wants to suck a dick, all three of which occur frequently in nature
Steam engines were invented by several ancient societies but not applying it as a power source for machines was still harder to do than pure animal/usually slave power. I know for sure the theory was thought of in ancient Greece and experimental early steam engines were made, they just didn't get attached to stuff to make em go
They were basically toy devices designed to demonstrate the properties of steam. The conceptual use of them for work doesn't appear at all till the 16th century. Descriptions of using it as a turbine pop up in the 1500s, with detailed designs of pumps being made in the 1600s and the first piston used to raise weights was like in 1690. First steam powered device with real use was a water pump made in 1698.
Interestingly, though the combustion engine basically killed research into steam powered cars, there were some made all the way till 1930, see this thing which had a fast firing boiler and electric starter and could go over 90 miles an hour and 1500 (probably a lot less but this what they claimed) miles before having to refuel the water tank lol, it could run surprisingly clean depending on the fuel you used to heat the water. Same engineers later made some steam powered planes in the 1930s and there were a couple other projects since but nothing in mass production.
I'm actually not sure why steam engine use in vehicles stopped, the power efficiency is comparable or better than combustion, and the start up time is under a minute for well designed engines, and there's no tank boilers (they used a series of coiled small diameter tubes as boilers) so they don't explode. I think engine maintenance was worse though and research dollars and infrastructure were already moving more with internal combustion, and they were really heavy. It's kind of crazy how the cars worked, basically the boiler tubes would be filled then flash heated and instantly evaporate. If the money was really put into it though, steam engines are interesting viable alternatives to combustion and electric (would require ton of resources though and idk how it compares to electric vehicles given the maintenance, fuel source, and water requirements). If you want to see one of the Dobel cars (and can bear watching Jay Leno lol), his dumb car show did an episode on it here. There's also at least one company trying to work on modern steam engines for vehicle use (but I'm sure there's also tons of problems with it lol).
I would do really simple electricity , like waterwheel + magnets + copper wire that heats up for warmth (simple af stator simple af rotor exposed copper wire) and off of that simple technology I figure everyone else would be able to learn and take it from there, people have always been about the same smartness they just didn't have as much human history and discoveries to learn from as we do today
You would be sitting there with a science fair project trying to convince people who have never seen dirt that they can have warm copper if they try hard enough. Me? I know what uranium is. I know it comes out of the ground. I sure as shit know that if you put it in a thing and pour water on it or whatever it makes nuclear power. My village would have megawatts of energy while you're being lynched for displaying magnetism.
What are you gonna do with that electricity? Megawatts of energy that you can't a) use or b) store. They're gonna look at your dumbass and go oh wow you made steam please fuck off
I would do it somewhere cold in the winter obviously, showing the romans how to heat up wire in a mediterranean summer would be stupid, hell I would join in in bullying me if I tried to show that off. But showing this to say, idk somewhere colder than a well diggers ass in the middle of winter like those scandinavians and you have heating without firewood, which is useful as fuck. Hell if you show it to the Romans in the winter at night.
Look at me. Imagine who I must be if I'm this confident. How gifted a child I was. You think I'm going to stop at inventing nuclear power or that I'm just doing it for the hell of it? That's Step 1. I'm inventing slot machines, porno, MRI machines because they're cool as shit, and multiple domestic uses for electricity as I remember them. Electric kettles. Lightbulbs. Vapes.
coulda shoulda woulda, I'm teaching my doc's how to use soap, enjoy your porno while you're in a plague
