Time Travelling

[Dave]

We have many threads here at Chronicles about whether Time Travel is possible; what to take, who to see, where to go; or paradoxes that might occur. There is very little about the practicalities involved.

Obviously, you need some cash for spending money. No point in taking a circa 2010 £20 note back to 1950. Old coins are worth more than their face value. Gold and Silver are probably good, but where do you get hold of that?

You probably should take all your inoculations. If your ancestors survived the plague though, you probably share their immunity to it.

Then you need to look the part. You are going to stand out a little in trainers and a hoodie if you go back to 1840. So, you will need to have someone run up some costumes, or raid your local theatre wardrobe.

But I've just been watching the TV programme "QI" and I have discovered an even bigger problem I hadn't though about. The average height has been steadily increasing with time, so that oft quoted fact that Napoleon was short is not actually true. At 5ft 7 he was average height for that time period. As you go back further, the heights grow shorter. If you look at old armour or coffins they always look like they were made for children, and door frames in old houses are always very low so I have to stoop down. So, any Time Traveller back in Time is going to stand out like Goliath to David, and anyone going into the future will be a dwarf. Not much one can do about that problem.

 

[drush9999]

Other problems are language, the way Latin was spoken when Julius Caesar was around, or Old English a 1000 years ago.
You'd more likely stand out because you didn't bow to a passing nobleman, or simply walked in a different way.
Let alone bringing back diseases that hadn't evolved yet...

For some reason I think about this all the time, would love to check out famous events and people before photos and film/video were available.

 

[Pyan]

The average height has been steadily increasing with time

Surely the key word there is "average",Dave - there will always have been people that were taller or shorter than the average height for the era. How far would a persop have to go back before a height of, say, 5' 11" really stand out enough to arouse suspicion that he might not be "normal"?

Let alone bringing back diseases that hadn't evolved yet...

Or indeed, be immune to ones that everyone caught as a matter of course? A vaccination mark in itself would be difficult to explain - remember Brad Pitt as Achilles in Troy...

 

[The Judge]

Well, Charles II was 6ft tall ('two yards high' I think the description was), which was unusual in the 1650s, but no one appears to have demonised him on that account.

As for costumes, I don't think the local am-dram wardrobe will cut it, somehow. But I don't recommend hoping to find some spare clothes lying about either - that's when the average height issue (and bust and waist size for ladies) will create problems.

 

[Ursa major]

Well, Charles II was 6ft tall ('two yards high' I think the description was), which was unusual in the 1650s, but no one appears to have demonised him on that account.

To be fair, it was thought bad manners to even broach the subject of reducing his height after the less-than-successful operation on his father.

As for costumes, I don't think the local am-dram wardrobe will cut it, somehow. But I don't recommend hoping to find some spare clothes lying about either - that's when the average height issue (and bust and waist size for ladies) will create problems.

True. Decades ago, I read a novel about the "witches" of Pendle. As part of the info-dumping there was a description of the inordinantly complicated dress of that time. (The POV character, a (gentle?)woman, had all sorts of under-petticoats to deal with. One could travel as a destitute peasant, I suppose, but I doubt it would give one much freedom of travel in some societies.

 

[The Judge]

To be fair, it was thought bad manners to even broach the subject of reducing his height after the less-than-successful operation on his father.

Since the description was part of a Wanted poster issued by the Roundheads, I don't think bad manners would have deterred them - and I imagine they thought the operation a complete success in making Charles I 'shorter by the head'! (The quote is from Elizabeth I, who also had such body- and life-shortening operations carried out).

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Well, Charles II was 6ft tall ('two yards high' I think the description was), which was unusual in the 1650s, but no one appears to have demonised him on that account.

As for costumes, I don't think the local am-dram wardrobe will cut it, somehow. But I don't recommend hoping to find some spare clothes lying about either - that's when the average height issue (and bust and waist size for ladies) will create problems.

Well I'm not so sure J.

It might have been the real reason no one liked his dad and look what happened there.

EDIT:

Look we're going to have some kind of posting syncronisation system. Ursa beat me to it.

Even worse you replied before I could get in.

Rats

 

[mosaix]

Look we're going to have some kind of posting syncronisation system. Ursa beat me to it.

Even worse you replied before I could get in.

Rats

You need a time machine.

 

[Montero]

In terms of costumes am-dram wouldn't cut it - re-enactors would though. You'd need to be super-careful and use hand loom woollen cloth not machine woven - some weave patterns today were unknown then and any weaver or clothier you passed in the street would be caught by it.

Check out Kentwell Hall for example of re-enactors.

Here Award Winning Re-Creations at Kentwell | Kentwell, Suffolk, UK
and
Here The Tudor Costume Page

Height is not necessarily a problem - there were some tall people - Henry 8th, Rupert of the Rhine as well as Charles II. The Scots were generally taller than the English apparently, due to a more nutritious diet based on porridge and fish. Good skin and good teeth would make you a bit special in some circles.
Language would be a problem as would suspicion of strangers. Being a rich foreign merchant and hiring local servants would be a good start.
Bear in mind that even today we can't always understand local accents from the other end of the country, but we are at least open to the idea that they exist. There were certainly occasions when an Englishman travelling well away from home inside England came under suspicion of being a foreign spy as he spoke foreign.
Need to perhaps be careful of when you chose to travel - there was a lot of fear of Spanish spies in the Elizabethan period and of the wild Irish during the civil war. The English Civil war followed a period of English colonisation of Ireland, uprisings, and refugees. There were many stories of atrocities, most not true. One of the scare stories of the English Civil War was that Charles I was going to bring in Irish troops to fight in England. After the Battle of Marston Moor, the Welsh women in the Royalist bagage trayne were taken to be Irish - they didn't cover their hair, had long knives and spoke a wild foreign language - and they were mutilated and slaughtered.

 

[Montero]

Well I'm not so sure J.

It might have been the real reason no one liked his dad and look what happened there.

Charles I was short as was his Queen - even for the period. Charles was very dignified and elegant, his Queen tended to patter around excitably from what little I've heard.

 

[Montero]

Body language is probably another give-away - not necessarily consciously, but in a way that would make people uneasy.

Mind you, wearing clothes to exact period specification does alter the way you move. The only way to walk in bucket top boots is to swagger.

Nothing to do with time travel, but Janet Kagan deals with body language rather interestingly in Hellspark.

 

[Dave]

Don't you hate it when you think you have an original idea, only to find someone else has already had it before?

The many authors here must frequently find that someone has already also published the book too.

That's what I found today. I have just bought a book called The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer ISBN 9781845950996.

Imagine you could travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see, and hear, and smell? Where would you stay? What are you going to eat? And how are you going to test to see if you are going down with the plague?

It is a bit like The Hitchhikers Guide... for Time Travellers. An essential book if you are going to travel to world in which sheep are the size of dogs, 30-year-old women are regarded as so much "winter forage", and green vegetables widely held to be poisonous.

The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there.

L.P. Hartley, The Go-between

The Bookseller said he had just read it and recommended it.

 

[The Judge]

It is a bit like The Hitchhikers Guide... for Time Travellers. An essential book if you are going to travel to world in which sheep are the size of dogs, 30-year-old women are regarded as so much "winter forage", and green vegetables widely held to be poisonous.

They fed the pigs with them?? One way of getting rid of the surplus population, I suppose.

 

[Dave]

No, that is a line from Chaucer, he is inferring something else - when fresh produce is not available.

 

[The Judge]

Oh dear. Showing my literary ignorance here! I would have got 'The Go-Between' quote, so I suppose one out of two isn't bad.

 

[michaelhall2007]

We have many threads here at Chronicles about whether Time Travel is possible; what to take, who to see, where to go; or paradoxes that might occur. There is very little about the practicalities involved.

Obviously, you need some cash for spending money. No point in taking a circa 2010 £20 note back to 1950. Old coins are worth more than their face value. Gold and Silver are probably good, but where do you get hold of that?

You probably should take all your inoculations. If your ancestors survived the plague though, you probably share their immunity to it.

Then you need to look the part. You are going to stand out a little in trainers and a hoodie if you go back to 1840. So, you will need to have someone run up some costumes, or raid your local theatre wardrobe.

But I've just been watching the TV programme "QI" and I have discovered an even bigger problem I hadn't though about. The average height has been steadily increasing with time, so that oft quoted fact that Napoleon was short is not actually true. At 5ft 7 he was average height for that time period. As you go back further, the heights grow shorter. If you look at old armour or coffins they always look like they were made for children, and door frames in old houses are always very low so I have to stoop down. So, any Time Traveller back in Time is going to stand out like Goliath to David, and anyone going into the future will be a dwarf. Not much one can do about that problem.

 

[michaelhall2007]

What do you think they'd actally do if your were dumb enough to get caught?
Lets say they figure it out in the next 10 years and you went back to 1985 to see if Michael Jackson realy was black.
Would the scientist and government really be all white coats and guns like in ET & Flight of the navagator?
Additional: You managed to hide the Delorion.
Also this question is research for a book idea Ive started.

 

[Dave]

Unless it was a hushed-up, government-white-coats, Roswell-style conspiracy, then for a start, it would fundamentally change our way of thinking about our world. You wouldn't be the last, but only the beginning of time tourism. You would be lauded as an international celebrity, and appear on every reality TV show. It would be impossible to prevent pollution of technology and ideas from the future to the past, or of stealling rare items of value to take to the future. This would be year zero and we would begin counting the years TT - post time travel. I don't think it would be great for our society. It would like a seven year old getting the key to the sweet shop. So, for your story you need to employ that old standard of tiime travel stories and hobble your machine in some way - it is damaged and only works one way before blowing a flux capacitor, running out of power or frying it's circuits.

 

[WaylanderToo]

could you imagine taking an Abrahms or Leopard II tank back to WWII or WWI... or even earlier, English Civil War... Thermopolae...

 

[galanx]

The topic is dealt with in Alfred Bester's "Hobson's Choice".