Slide Back to Basics?

For me I would love it!

Being I learned all of my skills and sciences from hands on experience. It would be much slower and more cumbersome of course.( I do love my $300 scientific calculator)

But for the most part much of the manufacturing processes and techniques we use today are just improved methods based largely on many processes that could be easily seen and understood in that era. And given knowledge of the more modern techniques it would be possible to integrate and implement them into what was done at that time with some educated guess work and experimentation.

Unfortunately much of the electronics we take for granted would be nearly impossible to recreate without first creating several other processes that would allow for actual semiconductors to be manufactured. But for the most part I could handle life then other wise!

I continued to teach slide rules for years after calculators became available, on the theory that anyone who could use a slide rule correctly could also read the scales on other devices reliably (like on a ruler, thermometer, graph, ...) Now that the slide rule is essentially gone and many other devices are digital, the ability to read scales and graphs correctly is largely disappearing.

A mere 100 years?
No prob... I'd be happy as Larry.
As long as you have a decent axe, a saw for metal and wood and few rasps and files, a pillar drill (drill press) is very versatile too. You can make just about anything.
dig up the back garden to grow more veg.
If you are really in a hurry you could maybe get a bicycle, but hey man that excessive speed could be dangerous...

What would you need to make? A water or windmill would be fun...water mill is prob easier.
Del

I am minded of one of the Hitch Hikers books when Arthur Dent ends up on an earth like world with 15th century technology - solid metal working for knives etc but not much more on the technology front. All he is able to add to their life is the most perfect sandwich!

Arthur Dent was a minor management person in local BBC radio but it is embarassing for me to admit that I would struggle to do more. I think I might get there in the end but I am a chemical engineer so my area is the design of scope for chemical plants not the detail of any of the equipment so whilst important my knowledge is a step away from the practical realm that I think mechanical, Civil & Electrical Engineers would all have.

Interestingly Arthurs main frustration was that he was unable to recreate any of the artistic things he enjoyed - music scores, instruments, books etc. I wonder how say a modern musician would cope with the limitations of the 19th C - even though say a violin hasnt chnaged that much in 500 yrs probably hte only rehearsal /composing tool that was available 100+ yrs ago would be the metronome. So I think most other occupations would struggle even where they havent ostensibly changed as much as engineering in the last 100 yrs

I'd have though it pretty easy to make some basic musical instruments. Percussion, too eay.
Xylophone, no prob.
Could you remember how to make a marimba... I only said that cos it has a ring to it....
I could make a harp...
Lyre..
yes I could!
Sorry this is getting silly now
Del

I suspect that unless one was a very good salesman/entrepreneur, one would be bogged down by lack of backers to finance the individual effort. There is, or was, an inertia against innovation. Imagine suggesting a cable stayed bridges back then! Me, I wouldn't because I think they are ugly and lack the natural look of previous designs, but I doubt there would be any backing for it anyway.

In my own field, the main pre-computer method of analysis of statically indeterminate structures, Hardy Cross' Method of Moment Distribution, didn't see the light of day until 1935. Some of the formula methods of the German Engineers existed before that.

The best thing to do would be to remember as much history as you could and then forecast the future. But then, your presence would change the course of events and the future history books would be different to the ones you knew.

That temptation to change history as we now see it would be to great for me no questions at all.

I am a realist so for me the relative gains I could acquire to better things as I see them would pose little moral or ethical dilemmas. Some areas of life I would set back to my best of abilities and others I would push to enhance.

Being a part of my own past would be proof enough for me that our fates are not fixed and therefor opens an unlimited potential of possible outcomes. I would likely do my best to work with the greater minds of the times and see for myself if they are really as great as history says they are.

This one's been a favorite in sci-fi for years. Some of the best examples are Leo Frankowski's "The CrossTime Engineer" series and Eric Flint's "1492". In every case, the thing simply is to identify a need, and then bring superior technique to bear upon it.

Of course, by 1909-1910, most manufacturing techniques were already pretty well developed. It seems to me that the major advancements in the last century were in materiels science and electronics. After all, it's pretty difficult to build a turbine engine without super-alloys and CNC machining, and space is just impossible without computers.

Anyway, it kinda depends on what sort of engineer you are. If you're a white collar type, you'll most likely die very confused. However, if you are a dirty hands engineer, I expect you'd do just fine.