The Time Traveler's appearance and accessories?

[Professor J. Cogsworthy]

If a Steampunk adventurer/professor/inventor ( read that last one as 'gadget lover' ) had the ability to travel back and forth through time how would that affect his appearance? Would he have some fairly obvious anachronisms visible in his clothing, his accessories and his gear?

If he ( or she ) had access to the modern materials we do ( and think of all the stuff in our future that we have yet to see ) would he ignore the advantages those materials have? Lightweight insulation materials, bright dye colors, synthetic materials...... the list is fairly long. Velcro, elastic, spandex, nylon....

Think about something as normal to us as aluminum. When the refining process was in its early days it was as expensive as a precious metal and having something made from it was a way to show off. We think of aluminum as almost disposable.... cheap enough to abuse.... The same way we think of plastic. ( and we live in a world full of things that would be impossible without plastic )

And in a society that functioned as we pretend the Steampunk world does all of those items and materials would be in high demand as status symbols. You'd have them out where they could be seen. You'd be defining the the style of the day by wearing things from the future  ( or the past ) We may not even think twice about some things they would value greatly...

A frockcoat, a bowler and a pair of Chuck Taylor high tops in red? A digital watch, a tablet style computer...?

Your thoughts....?

[Maets]

Interesting question.  I would think trying to blend in would be of the utmost importance.  Travelling back in time would require one to collect items that fit the era of destination. Travelling forward in time gives much more flexibility. 

[Professor J. Cogsworthy]

Interesting question.  I would think trying to blend in would be of the utmost importance.  Travelling back in time would require one to collect items that fit the era of destination. Travelling forward in time gives much more flexibility. 

I think you have missed part of the point.... I'm not talking about blending in to the destination.
I'm talking about showing off the stuff you bring back, or simply utilizing the stuff you brought back.

If time travel was not a secret that is.....

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

could we add a subtle hint of Dr who/Torchwood into the mix?

[Miss Mulluggs]

Chuck Taylor high tops seem a bit flimsy. I think a time-traveller might prefer some well-made boots that can withstand a bit of adventuring. As far as other clothes go, many things made these days, especially cheaper items, though they have the advantage of modern materials and things like zips, nevertheless fall apart quite quickly too. So I think a Victorian time-traveller would hold onto a few things. Modern standards of (im)modesty might be a bit of a culture shock to a less seasoned traveller, so for example a woman might have to weigh up the practical advantages of trousers over her Victorian standards of propriety. But I can see zip-up boots, coats, hoodies and cardigans replacing items with lots of buttons or poppers.

Make up has become far more user-friendly (it doesn't dry on your face and crack) and is available in a lot of colours these days. The more image-obsessed time traveller, especially women and dandies, might adopt bright make up to show off their excursions into the future.

Gadgets would definitely take a turn for the modern. Things like batteries would lessen the need for bulky power-generating devices, for example.

There are obvious advantages to high visibility jackets in mines, dark factories and underground railways. Perhaps a florescent suit and top hat combo? Perish the thought.

[Professor J. Cogsworthy]

I was using the Chucks as an example of a highly visible item to add to your outfit to show off
the fact that you have access to them.

As to violating clothing style norms, there is a large amount of "in your face" inappropriateness
in Steampunk.

[Captain Lyerly]

Nothing wrong with Chucks!  As a matter of fact, certain gentlemen of my acquaintance who work in Teams used black high-top Chucks in certain of their maritime adventures in the Northern Gulf.

If one wanted to show off the proceeds of time travel, it could range from the gaudy of ancient relics to the latest futuristic/alien technology.  How to keep that in the retro-futurist, neo-Victorian aesthetic would be tricky, but I am sure it could be done.



Cheers!

Chas.

[Professor J. Cogsworthy]

yes... but.

If you are a time traveler showing off do you try to maintain that neo-Victorian look
or do you embrace the aesthetic of the futurist? Or more likely do you blend them to
respect your 'native' mindset and still embrace the new?

[Kittybriton]

My goodness me! Steampunk  is an absolute gift  to the time traveller - to take a quartz driven facsimile timepiece rather than the heavy clockwork pendant watch on my first visit to the sixteenth century might have spared me the  embarrassment of having forgotten to wind it, and a digital recorder concealed in a novel ear trumpet might enable me to record President Lincoln's address at Gettysburg  for generations long since passed on the myriad  worlds of the Estonian Star  Empire!

[ElecTinker]

Theres two issues here, one, the corruption of the timeline. For instance, if you bring aluminum back or plastic, then you could change their importance.  The second issue is the ability to power the gadgets. Unless you continually hop time to recharge, your gadgets will loose their usefulness. And how useful would a tablet be with out the Internet for knowledge, kinda seems like a blank book

[Professor J. Cogsworthy]

Theres two issues here, one, the corruption of the timeline. For instance, if you bring aluminum back or plastic, then you could change their importance.  The second issue is the ability to power the gadgets. Unless you continually hop time to recharge, your gadgets will loose their usefulness. And how useful would a tablet be with out the Internet for knowledge, kinda seems like a blank book

Tablet?  think of it as an E reader full of reference manuals from 100 years in the future.

Charging? Bring back a generator.

Timeline corruption? In a fictional timeline.... is not really a problem. ( unless you are referring to changing
your own present and not being able to return to it ) Traveling into the future and then introducing something new to your timeline after you return only changes it from the point you returned to forward.

And I'm not really talking about bringing the production tech or raw materials back to Victorian times
just a few small portable items for personal use.

Bringing tech back in that scale would be motivated by the desire for monetary gain.... I see
adventure and novelty being more of a motivator for ( my version of ) Steampunk.

[Mr. Boltneck]

I can't help thinking of Michael Moorcock's character Jerry Cornelius, and his habit of wearing a watch on each wrist, apparently in a (largely futile) attempt to keep track of his personal temporal displacements.

[Hez]

If time travel were fairly widespread the status would be in the exclusiveness of what you show off.  I would love a dress by Worth.  Or handmade medieval tapestry.  Children's toys from each era/area I visited.  A nice example of each local costume or jewelry.  (This?  Why thank you.  It's a little thing I picked up in Egypt... a few millenia ago.)
Others might collect:
 The first Edsel off the line.
 Photos (or, more Victorian I suppose, stuffed and mounted examples) of extinct animals. 
Signatures of important people (the name dropping competitions and autograph hunting that would go on!!!) 
Secretly taken photos of the traveler with Atilla the Hun and Cleopatra. 
One of a kind items like Tesla's prototype or rough copy of a patent application.
Or I suppose the ultimate souvenir Alexander the Great's love child by the (presumably female) traveler.

[Boston Jones]

Well if every decision you makes starts a "paralleled" universe, different time lines, then I suppose you bring what you wanted, if you wanted to....

Then again if parallel universes don't exist then I don't think bringing a piece of plastic where it doesn't belong would matter too much..

[akumabito]

I can now see a new pastime for time travelers, combining the adrenalin rush ootobombing f an extreme sport, with the strategic insight of chess, and the creativity of theater; Photobombing historical pictures. Think of all the iconic pictures of the last century or so.. imagine someone, somewhere in the pic making some sort of secret time-travelers hand sign.. how did he get there? How hard was it to get in the picture? There's some bragging rights for ya!

[rhylla]

Photobombing historical pictures. Think of all the iconic pictures of the last century or so.. imagine someone, somewhere in the pic making some sort of secret time-travelers hand sign.. how did he get there? How hard was it to get in the picture? There's some bragging rights for ya!

oooo i LIKE that idea lol what fun! my mind's working overtime thinking of all the people and situations that would be made even more fascinating by looking for the secret signs and grinning faces hehehe

-Rhylla-

[Prof. George of Chaos]

This idea has a similar flavour to the one explored in Bruce Sterling's short story Mozart in Mirrorshades, you know.

I sometimes feel that certain technologies have a golden age. When the Singer sewing machine company was still casting the bodies of its machines in iron, they were the finest sewing machines in the world, and for one's basic sewing needs, I believe they remain so.
Sunbeam began a wonderful legacy when they mass-produced their mixmasters in the 1950s, and I believe that one or two companies are still making benchtop mixers of equivalent quality.
Italian scooters were perfected sometime last century.
We've never before had pocket-knives as good as we can get today, and it may be that one day the great companies which make them will no longer do so.
I'm not aware of anybody but our Jake von Slatt making oil kerosene of a comparable quality to the ones we made before electricity rolled in.
There are legends about the quality of Damascus-steel swords.
I don't keep up with the world of Classical music, but I've not heard of anybody besting the violins of the Stradivari family, and of course everybody knows that if you want good Doc Martens you need to get them from a British factory.

I believe that Hez is right about the exclusivity and rarity of one's souvenirs, but it also seems to me that if I were picking up trifles from around time then I would make it my business to get history's finest examples of anything I wanted to use, mass produced or no.

I think it depends on the sort of person your time traveler is whether they allow their overall look to be shaped very much by their travels.
I can very easily imagine a more traditionally minded chap adding a couple of very high-tech fobs to his watchchain in the manner of Neal Stephenson's character, Hackworth, while remaining aesthetically unchanged in his three piece suit (perhaps a thicker, rubber tread on his shoes, but nothing obvious).
Then you have your dedicated followers of fashion who will create a market for imitation timeslipped goods (which might create some interesting temporal feedback), and then you have your genuine eccentrics, who'll wear anything that takes our fancy, no matter where or when we find it.

It would certainly be interesting to see wearable electronics meshed with Renaissance fashions.

Very interesting question. Good show, Professor Cogsworthy.

[pakled]

Comment deleted

[Prof. George of Chaos]

Do you suppose you'd get mildly patronizing enthusiasts for the cultures of various time periods, the way the Victorians had Orientalists and we in modern Western culture have Japanophiles?

[Arabella Periscope]

My goodness me! Steampunk  is an absolute gift  to the time traveller - to take a quartz driven facsimile timepiece rather than the heavy clockwork pendant watch on my first visit to the sixteenth century might have spared me the  embarrassment of having forgotten to wind it, and a digital recorder concealed in a novel ear trumpet might enable me to record President Lincoln's address at Gettysburg  for generations long since passed on the myriad  worlds of the Estonian Star  Empire!

What an intriguing discussion!  It seems to bring to mind the quintessence of steampunk in this time -- that is to say, to take the things that are always and everywhere recognized to be classic and lasting, and therefore unobtrusive, such as garments of proven shape and quality, and to modify them with futuristic technology, as in motion-wound timepieces and solar-fuelled devices in wood and brass.  It seems to me that we Time Travellers need to be able to be either inconspicuous or provably from another time, according to the circumstances.  Therefore, a hidden yet incontrovertibly awe-inspiring technology that can be disguised for comfort and convenience would seem to be ideal. . . The best of all possible worlds!

[Kittybriton]

By George! I think she's got it!

Now, will she share it?

[akumabito]

Hmmm... just a thought here: what premis are working from? Someone just invented time travel and goes to interesting times/places? Is time travel wide spread? Who can mka euse of it? How is it controlled / governed? I think the inventor of time travel would want to keep it to himself and absolutely doesn't want to show off where/when he's been - if the tech falls into the wrong hands, the consequences could be dire.

There's a lot of money, power and finfluence attached to knowledge of certain events or items.. Although a but of a stretch to think that modern micro-electronics could be reverse-engineered, I believe anything from the pre-computer era is fair game. That pretty much includes everything pre-1950.. Everything mechanical is fairly simple to duplicate by skilled engineers. Electronics at this time were quite rudimentary, and reverse-engineering it would not be too hard. Let's take the Manhattan Project for instance - mind boggling engineering at its time. As far as military technology goes, it's pretty trivial by today's standards. In fact, assuming the knowledge we gathered since then can be transferred to the past, there is no real reason nuclear weapons could be developed half a century earlier. Maybe more.

I think I like the 19th century a lot more without long-range bombers, ballistic missiles, etc. Mind you, they don't even have to bring back the item in question - just the details of their contruction. And nearly everything about WWII era weaponry is in the public domain by now..

[Kittybriton]

Two things the aspiring chrononaut must be aware of:

• If you accept the premise of time travel you must accept that it has always been possible. You also have to accept the possibility that not only might an ill-considered action have unforeseen effects later, but that you might inadvertently be the means of bringing time travel to light in the first place causing the sort of paradox that causes terrible headaches for chrononauts and vituperative arguments among professors.
• It's all very well travelling to another age, but once you're there you will be using up your allotted life span at the normal rate, which can be very draining if you do it a lot, not to mention disorienting when you get back to your native era, and can put rather a crimp in the amount of time you thought you might spend writing up the jolly memoirs.
• All of which presumes that you depart and return safely. Because if you don't we're all in a right bugger's muddle!

[Arabella Periscope]

How about a Brass Goggles Anthology, entitled: TIME TRAVEL, or A Right Bugger's Muddle?  I can think of a number of examples setting forth the usual paradoxes!

[Kittybriton]

That sounds like a splendid idea. I would lend you my copy to crib from - you did a wonderful job. But I already loaned it to a rascal who absconded with same.