They invent a time machine that takes you back in time. You are there one way for the rest of your life. What do you bring with you that you can sell or barter for to get rich? For example, a computer in ancient Egypt is cool, but when the battery dies, the machine will be useless so bad idea. Bringing back gold makes no sense because it was $20 an ounce 150 years ago. My idea is to bring new inventions to the world like the paperclip and the 3-ring binder to the late 18th century and get rich off the royalties. Can anyone think of anything better?
That really depends on when and where you are going. If you are going back ten years, to 2002, it might be worthwhile to bring back an Iphone to sell to Microsoft. If you are going back 50,000 years, a bow and arrow would put you on the top of the tech heap.
While it would be fun to go visit the past, I wouldn't want to live there. But as a thought experiment- lets say its the equivelent of a 'life boat' and you take what you can quickly get. Gold was always valuable- silver too- taking some would be good to get started. The number one thing i would want would be anti-biotics. Next would be information that you could easily transport with you to start a business- though with anti-biotics and an understanding of modern germ theory I could probably be a very successful surgeon.... Hmmm what else? Far enough back, distilled alcohol wasn't invented yet- that would be an easy to make product that would sell well. Oh and a really good celestial almanac to predict eclipses and comet passages....never hurts to aw the natives...
Lottery numbers. Horse race results. Sports results. Stock market prices Drug formulas. Oil reserve surveys.
this is an example how poverty and no education ruins a person to the point of this waste of time and energy. this person wishes to get rich in the worse of times when disease and a common leg break could kill you. i would suggest you get an education and develop wealth in reality.
I would check the biggest lottery winning of American history. Get the winning numbers. Then travel back thru time to the day before the drawing. Play the winning numbers and become instant multi millionaire. Or go to the time before the PC revolution took off. Then buy Microsoft Stocks when there were penny stocks. Then sell those stocks before they go south. As for other times. I am not interested. It's like being a sole survivor of a major world wide disaster.You will be by yourself.
The lotto ticket would be more of a sure thing. If you try the stock market, your purchases and sells could alter the market from what is on your historical printout. Basic long term trends might be the same, but the day to day trades could differ.
But you'd have to know far enough ahead of when you were going to be zapped back in time. Or are the drawing number results stored somewhere online that you can reference and print out? If so, a printout of a Powerball or two would do the trick - like ya really need more one, right.
One thing is the key. Let's say you would go back 20 January 1, 1912. So you take back gold. Well, enough gold to make you rich in 1912 would make you rich in 2012. If you have that much gold now, why make the trip? Cash? Cash from today would be worthless in 1912. Stock market, world series winners, and other information would be of little help unless you can get money to invest or wager. Let's face it. For most of us the skills we have today would not translate well to 1912. I'll take a laptop with solar batteries loaded with plans and schematics for a things like the automatic transmission, refrigerator, air conditioning, radio, television. and spend my days at the patent office. The laptop would be the same for any period in time but it would be loaded with data pertinent to the period.
For 1912, it's easy: medicines, especially penicillin, sulfa, and Novocaine/Morrocaine/Benzocaine. Also, for 1912, I would do my best to bring back engineering blueprints for (and samples of) a BAR, an M1 Garand, an Auto-Ordinance M1921 (better known as a "Tommy Gun"), and an MG-42. Other things to bring back with similar applications would be the synchronizer gear that enables an aircraft to fire a machine gun through the prop, blueprints for long-range, high-speed, large-warhead torpedoes (the Japanese Type 93 "Long Lance" will work nicely), and the like. As for cash...buy contemporary money from collectors. If you have to pay $2-3 for every dollar...so what? While $3000 today is not exactly pocket change, the $1000 or so it might get you in 1912 currency is a small fortune!
LSD is the only real time travel machine. The only thing is that you would be lucky to bring back your original brain with you when you returned.
For 1912, if I could figure out a way to stop WWI that would reap more benefits than any number of inventions I could bring back.
Actually each Lottery website should have the winning number history so it should be fairly easy to print out and take with you. But I would prefer many small winnings rather than one or two big ones. Low profile and all that.
you need to go to the drawing before it's won...or you're splitting the jackpot with the folks that would have won it alone. (unless you off them)
For ancient Egypt, you take popcorn, watermelon etc seeds; you take some math books, astronomy, medical and construction manuals. Make sure you know basic chemistry like how to make a good candle from tallow, how to make soap, etc. And beer. No marijuana seeds. No teaching about gunpowder. That is for long term. Short term: steel needles, mirrors, folding knives, compass, a couple of good magnets for making more compasses; bic lighters, Shampoo, lots of aspirin, penicillin, other basic medicine. One of the first things you do, show them how to make an arch and keystone, then a dome.
How about the skeleton coast of Angola where you could fill buckets with diamonds back before de beers got a hold of it.
Ayuh,.... A Zippo lighter, 'n an extra gallon of fuel, in the Stone Age or later... You could be a God....
I will wait until the PlayStation 4 is released later this year (or quickly travel slightly forward in time to buy one) and then I will travel back to 1972 when gamers were playing on the Magnavox Odyssey and terrify them with the godlike technology of 2013 (assuming I can connect up my PlayStation 4 to the TV in 1972). The PlayStation 4 will be capable of making two teraflops of computations a second, meaning that the games' graphics will be far in advance of anything on the market at the moment. Then, maybe after I've done that, some numpty from 2054 who hasn't even been born yet will travel back in time to terrify the primitives of 2013 with the godlike games console technology of his era. If I remember rightly, John Titor's time travelling exploits were over a computer. Magnavox Odyssey (1972) PlayStation 4 (2013) A Magnavox Odyssey game
