4 ms·

I wonder which modern information would be actually useful a thousand years ago. Things like electricity, cumbustion engine etc wouldn't be very useful, but per

• goda90 5y ago
  Humans have been working with glass for a really long time. I wonder how hard it would be to make a microscope and kick off germ theory and antibiotics and such back then.
• ben_w 5y ago
  As someone mentioned on a different thread, a printing press would make a massive difference. The wine presses of 1022 were people standing on grapes in a box, so that could be significantly improved too. Significant steam power (so not that ancient Greek toy) might prove too difficult for the engineering of the era, but a pressure cooker might be possible as it’s allowed to leak. Screw cutting lathes, and in particular the guided toolpaths to make the output reliable and consistent, would be a big deal. Might be able to bootstrap enough magnets and wires for basic electricity, at which point you can make much better compasses — the Chinese were the first to go beyond lodestones and that was about 1000 years ago — and electricity makes electroplating possible and some acids (e.g. hydrochloric) and alkalis (e.g. sodium hydroxide) basically trivial. Float glass would radically increase the size and quality of individual windows panes. Knowing that lead oxide reduces the melting point would make manufacture much easier. Wikipedia’s list of medieval technology has some interesting surprises: apparently wheelbarrows are only about 850 years old, hourglasses and segmented arch bridges only about 680 years old.