Most Likely Time-Travelers

[Ahriman238]

Was having a conversation recently where time-travel came up, followed by how if you could industrialize Rome or something future historians would vote you "historical figure most likely to be a time-traveler." Naturally this germinated in my brain a bit.

So if we start from the assumption that time-travel is a thing and one or more people from our history actually came from the future, who would the most likely candidates be? Who seems to have maybe had inside knowledge or disproportionate influence over events? Who came from nowhere or could have easily faked their background? Who would a future time-traveler WANT to be, for the purposes of steering history or simply writing their assumed names upon it?

[Simon_Jester]

Leonardo da Vinci would be a perfect candidate for the hapless "accidental" time traveler:
-Tried to design all sorts of 'advanced' inventions that in practice could not be made to work with the technology of his era.
-Overlooked a lot of basic and simple innovations that actually could have made people's lives better.
-Leveraged the special talents he did have (e.g. drawing) to make a good life for himself, but...
-Ultimately didn't accomplish much of anything.

I say this partly as a tongue in cheek thing, but the idea isn't unique to me; I later came across it in The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein, in which "Leonard Vincent" was a graduate student of the man who invented the time machine, and who performed the only human trial with it.

[Adam Reynolds]

Leonardo da Vinci would be a perfect candidate for the hapless "accidental" time traveler:
-Tried to design all sorts of 'advanced' inventions that in practice could not be made to work with the technology of his era.

Though there was also the problem that his inventions weren't really based on proper engineering knowledge. Notably the DaVinci screw had no contra-rotating propeller, which would mean that it would spin as it flew. Though it would fit a layman without proper understanding of the subject.

-Ultimately didn't accomplish much of anything.

This should realistically be the fate of anyone. Whoever traveled back through time couldn't possibly have had an impact as they would have otherwise been recorded in history.

Another reasonable possibility is that they inadvertently ended up in an insane asylum(or worse) as they were speaking nonsense at the time. While it didn't involve a historical setting, Twelve Monkeys featured this concept of a time traveler being assumed to be crazy(and unlike Terminator, it is less obvious which is true).

[Simon_Jester]

Leonardo da Vinci would be a perfect candidate for the hapless "accidental" time traveler:
-Tried to design all sorts of 'advanced' inventions that in practice could not be made to work with the technology of his era.

Though there was also the problem that his inventions weren't really based on proper engineering knowledge. Notably the DaVinci screw had no contra-rotating propeller, which would mean that it would spin as it flew. Though it would fit a layman without proper understanding of the subject.

Yeah, I'm picturing him as, oh, an art student who got good grades in classical studies and trigonometry, and then suddenly got zapped into the past by accident.

-Ultimately didn't accomplish much of anything.

This should realistically be the fate of anyone. Whoever traveled back through time couldn't possibly have had an impact as they would have otherwise been recorded in history.

Well, I think Ahriman was touching on this idea by suggesting that the time travelers are individuals known to us in the history books, and that the explanation for their feats was in part "had superior knowledge by benefit of being a time traveler," rather than "was just that awesome."

[Ahriman238]

Simon is correct, since I suspect most unintentional or poorly-planned expeditions through time would wind up like the movie Timeline, where most everybody dies, I;m more asking which famed figures could plausibly be from the future.

[Elheru Aran]

Paracelsus, perhaps.

Socrates? Attempting to inculcate critical thinking and reason into early classical culture?

Christ, obviously (see Moorcock's 'Behold the Man'). Less obviously: various followers or Apostles. A decent argument could be made for Paul of Tarsus, as he certainly had a very influential hand in forming the Church's doctrine and roots. Several other figures in Christian history could be used as well-- Constantine I, Jerome, Augustine, and so forth.

A little less obviously: an assassin such as Brutus or Crassus. *Preventing* an alt-historic tragedy.

In a more modern period: Ignaz Semmelweis. Pioneered antiseptic medicine... and committed to an asylum for it, where he died ironically of an ailment which could have been prevented by the selfsame antiseptic methods he attempted to propagate. Well, obviously there's more to the historic story, but it's really a massive clusterfuck of rather epic proportions when you look at his biography. Can't help but feel for the poor guy.

You want something a little more esoteric?

Kaspar Hauser.

Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope.

Tank Man from the Tienanmen Square protests.

Otto von Bismarck could certainly be said to have 'steered' history...

[Purple]

Also Hitler. I can perfectly imagine a mad scientist with a time machine deciding that fuck it, he is going to leave a mark on history that the human race will newer forget.

[Broomstick]

I'd vote for Leonardo da Vinci, too.

Though there was also the problem that his inventions weren't really based on proper engineering knowledge. Notably the DaVinci screw had no contra-rotating propeller, which would mean that it would spin as it flew. Though it would fit a layman without proper understanding of the subject.

You mean a layman with knowledge of aviation, right? I mean, I wouldn't make that mistake, but I'm a pilot. Lots of other non-pilots would, even with advanced educations in other subjects.

Also, kind of hard to refine your engineering knowledge when running practical experiments and tests are impractical or impossible due to not having sufficient tech to make the tools to make the tools to get the job done. You can only bootstrap so much in one lifetime.

da Vinci was quite the odd duck in many ways, I can see him as a time traveler.

[Channel72]

Charles Babbage, I guess. He gets zapped back in time before Alan Turing figures out computation, and decides to beat him to it by creating a Victorian-era computer. But it proves to be too difficult with 19th century materials...

The problem with all of these scenarios, of course, is that most of these figures had documented parents, relatives, etc., which makes it hard to spin them as accidental time travelers who appeared out of nowhere.

[Simon_Jester]

True, although up until 1900 it was rather less difficult to falsify records. Correspondence was the main thing that'd be hard to fake; most educated people of the 19th century and earlier were avid letter-writters and sent letters back and forth each way.

[Ahriman238]

I wonder, how difficult would it be to so befriend/indebt a man that if I suddenly reappeared twenty years later he'd be willing to swear up and down that I was his son?

[Elheru Aran]

I wonder, how difficult would it be to so befriend/indebt a man that if I suddenly reappeared twenty years later he'd be willing to swear up and down that I was his son?

Fairly difficult, but a lot can depend upon the person. It might be easier to fool a sad drunk who fully realizes that his memory is clouded by alcoholism than a stoutly abstemious Quaker, to make a broad example. I'm not particularly a fan of that kind of manipulation though...

[SpottedKitty]

Charles Babbage, I guess. He gets zapped back in time before Alan Turing figures out computation, and decides to beat him to it by creating a Victorian-era computer. But it proves to be too difficult with 19th century materials...

It's not exactly easy even with modern materials; it's the design itself that's the real showstopper. You'd have to stipulate that the "real" Babbage has to be bright enough to design the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. Either that, or he'd have to carry back with him a copy of the blueprints used a few years back to build a single computing element — not the whole thing, that would have been huge and cost a not-so-small fortune to construct — of the Analytical Engine.

[puskas78]

Nikola Tesla?
Dmitri Mendeleev? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev He published that the known elements have many similar properties, and that more are waiting to be discovered.
Orwell? Did he imagine fucked up societies, or... did he know too much about them?

[Simon_Jester]

Orwell's nonfiction essay writing makes it fairly clear where he was coming from politically and it's pretty clear he's a man of his times. His essays are actually very good in my opinion, they've stood up to the test of time well, and they give you a much more complete picture of his character and political views than just reading 1984 and Animal Farm and calling it a day.