Maybe living in 1910 wouldn't have been too bad

[K7SGJ]

THE YEAR IS 1910







The year is 1910
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1910:



The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.





Fuel for this car was sold in drug stores only.






Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.






Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.






There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.






The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.






The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower !






The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.






The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.






A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
A dentist $2,500 per year; a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year;and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.






More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.






Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard.'






Sugar cost four cents a pound.






Eggs were 14 cents a dozen.






Coffee was 15 cents a pound.






Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.






Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.






The Five leading causes of death were:






1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke






The American flag had 45 stars.






The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was only 30.






Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented yet.






There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.






Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.






Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores.






Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health'






Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.






There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A. !

[N2NH]

My father was born in 1908. He didn't think it was all that great back then. He had some good old day stories, but having a stove that didn't run on wood, a telephone you could use sitting down, not having to go to the theatre to see a movie and even "talking movies" on TV were things he never got tired of.

Memories of the Influenza of 1918 did haunt him. He also was in a habit of acting as if he wasn't sick when he was very ill. I guess that's what passed for medicine back then.

[n2ize]

There is both good and bad in the past. Many great improvements have happened since then and many things have gotten much better. Salaries were lower back then but so was the cost of living. Perhaps some time in the future people will look back on 2013 and wonder, how people survived under such primitive conditions. It is funny that marijuana, heroin and cocaine were available over the counter then. Yet drug abuse was not as severe and addiction was less of a societal problem back then. People bought their "fix" at the pharmacy and rarely had to rob, steal or harm anyone tu support their habits and powerful drug cartels did not exist. Then we implemented prohibition and create more problems and a new class of "criminals".

[NQ6U]

Perhaps some time in the future people will look back on 2013 and wonder, how people survived under such primitive conditions.

In the future?? Hell, a lot of us wonder that now.

[KG4NEL]

No thanks.

[n2ize]

I would go back to 1910 only if I can retain all the knowledge of the future that I now posess. I would be the wealthiest and most famous man alive. I'd be the inventor of the transistor, the digital computer, new medications, new health procedures, atomic energy, new plastics, new styles of music, new comunications sytems, new ways to do cyptography, new ways to do so many things, new products and methods that save lives, prevent disease, and prolong life, you name it... I would be the most highly revered and more revolutionary, most influential, and in many ways the richest and most well known and powerful man in the world. It would be almost like having God-like status.

[KG4NEL]

I would go back to 1910 only if I can retain all the knowledge of the future that I now posess. I would be the wealthiest and most famous man alive. I'd be the inventor of the transistor, the digital computer, new medications, new health procedures, atomic energy, new plastics, new styles of music, new comunications sytems, new ways to do cyptography, new ways to do so many things, new products and methods that save lives, prevent disease, and prolong life, you name it... I would be the most highly revered and more revolutionary, most influential, and in many ways the richest and most well known and powerful man in the world. It would be almost like having God-like status.

Far more likely you'd end up in the loony bin, or at the very least in debt because nobody would finance such insane schemes.

[n2ize]

Far more likely you'd end up in the loony bin, or at the very least in debt because nobody would finance such insane schemes.

Well, you would have to do it in the right way and it would still require hard work. . You wouldn't go back to 1910 and just start talking about computers, transistors, antibiotics, etc. and ask for funding. Of course people would think you are a charlatan or nuts. You would have to first gain public confidence.One way would be to produce working prototypes of some of the easier to build devices and present them to scientists, engineers, etc so they could examine them carefully and determine that they actually do work. Likewise for things that are harder to create on your own you would have to express your ideas and concepts in writing taking care to use terminology and language that would be suitable for persons from that era to understand and then submit those ideas to people with the proper expertise for review. The process would have to be gradual but nonetheless, when people are confident that the things you are proposing can be demonstrated and are feasible and that they can revolutionize the way we live you will do very well in life. You will be quite wealthy and quite famous and people will have great confidence in your ideas. The key is to make it a gradual bit by bit process and gaining confidence by showing that your ideas actually do work. But yeah, if you were to lay it all on them at once with nothing to support your claims then you will be labeled a charlatan fraud or simply a nut job. You have to go about it the right way. It would be like me claiming that I can travel into time and go back to 1910. Unless I can back up my claim nobody would believe me. The thing is that virtually all the things you would be bringing back in time will be ones that you can demonstrate and show to work.

[N2NH]

In the future?? Hell, a lot of us wonder that now.

Yah. Where's those flying Jetson's cars and the underwater homes?

[NQ6U]

Yah. Where's those flying Jetson's cars and the underwater homes?

Jet packs, man, where are the goddamned jet packs??

[N2NH]

BTW, a favorite author of mine, Jack Finney, wrote two excellent time travel books. The second book is about living in the 1910s.

They're so well written it's like living in the past.

[n2ize]

Jet packs, man, where are the goddamned jet packs??

I have a friend who insists that jet packs would be the best way to commute to work and travel around. I tried to explain to him the Physics involved. Somehow he cannot seem to grasp the idea that the human body is not very aerodynamic and is more like a flying rock and that in order to merely stay aloft requires a huge amount of power thus a much larger fuel supply that could feasibly be carried along.

[kb2vxa]

Speaking of flying rocks, imagine a "road" rage incident with jet packs. First we'll have to find a name for it...

[K7SGJ]

Speaking of flying rocks, imagine a "road" rage incident with jet packs. First we'll have to find a name for it...

Rocket Rage

[K7SGJ]

Actually, with the way people drive on the road, I can't imagine all the falling debris from above if they were given some kind of jet pack or anti gravity vehicle.

[n2ize]

Speaking of flying rocks, imagine a "road" rage incident with jet packs. First we'll have to find a name for it...

Not to mention getting cut off by a 747-B on the way to work. Or a careless jet packer getting a buzz cut from a Sikorsky Black Hawk because he was texting while flying.

[kb2vxa]

Uh oh, I can see where this is heading. Actually I wasn't thinking of this guy and air packs, more like automatically limited to 200 feet keeping them out of FAA air space. Eh, strengthening radio towers isn't all that hard, building a debris screen over populated areas might be. On the other hand the kids can have fun.