sillyThe rules:
1) You can bring anything you want to the past, but you can't leave anything behind. So you can't bring back the polio vaccine and start treating people. It wouldn't work.
2) You can't take anything forward with you, either, except for information. So you could, say, travel back with a copy of a book and a pen, and have the book signed with that pen. Or you could bring a camera and take pictures. But all things must be somehow made from materials you carried with you.
3) You can't get sick in the past, but you could be eaten by a T-Rex. No one native to the time periods you're visiting will notice anything odd about you.
For my personal use, I would pack a bunch of digital cameras, Flip video recorders, and a gene sequencer, and hop back to Messina in 1347. I would then document the Black Death in ten year jumps, with lots of photographs and recordings of people trying to breathe as they fully expressed the virus. And then, when I got back to the present, I would drive the CDC insane...but I would finally know for sure.
For the good of all mankind, I would hop back to the pre-tape losses BBC archives with a tape-to-DVD portable recording rig (and a technician), and get copies of all the missing Doctor Who serials. Upon returning to the present day, I would probably also get knighted.
So what's your personal use? And what's your use for the good of all mankind?
April 22 2010, 07:49:19 UTC 7 years ago
For myself, I'd like to make four hops.
Travel back to 21st October 1805 and take a certain British Admiral to one side at the critical moment so that he didn't get shot. Capable, charismatic leaders are few and far between, so it would have been worth sidetracking Vice Admiral Viscount Nelson to have his personal influence on the Royal Navy(and not the influence of his legend).
Hop forward to 15th January 1812, La Coruna, Spain and help General Sir John Moore onto the transports waiting take his troops from under the nose of the French armies. We'd lose a very evocative poem, and gain a man who could have improved life for servicemen, as well as dealing effectively with Napoleon.
Hop forward to to October 1915 to spirit nurse Edith Cavell out of German captivity in Belgium, if I couldn't get her death sentence permanently rescinded. I appreciate that her death in particular made her legendary, and affected the entry of the USA into WW1, but I'd still prefer her to have remained alive. Alive, she could be legendary, but tell her own story ...
Finally, hop forward to 1916 in Cairo, Egypt with massive amounts of recording media to dog the footsteps of T. E. Lawrence (closer than his own shadow) for the rest of WW1. Just how much of a chimaera IS the legend?
For all mankind? Yes to the the Doctor Who programmes! And to the Library of Alexandria.
April 23 2010, 06:28:09 UTC 7 years ago