h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Actually, I might be able to make a stab at developing Penecillin. It can be found as an excretion of some bread molds. The trick would be getting several bacterial cultures running and keep trying new mold cultures until you find the right one. Working out dosages would be tricky, and it might only be good for topical applications (the digestive system tends to destroy stuff like that).

Basic sterile techniques would also be pretty handy. Just the idea of boiling water before drinking, and boiling "surgical" implements would cut down on a lot of infection.

I bet I could also make a solar water still to make potable water from seawater. That would be very handy for emergency water supplies on ships. (It probably wouldn't be efficient enough for general use...)

Sterile techniques is my personal favourite. Antiseptic like Carbolic Soap, and sterilisation would be easy to prove. Apparently Lister cut down the death rate on amputations from 70% to 0% within a few months by using these techniques.

A solar still would be a lot of hassle, and may need pretty fancy glass working techniques. Just go for an ordinary still As for the lightbulb - take a big beaker, a couple of copper wires, a wee thin wire, some electricity (from a dynamo, or simple battery - both fairly easy to make) and some Nitrogen (purified by passing air over heated copper - basically removing the O2). Connect the wires to either end of the thin wire and place in beaker so that both copper wires trail out over the top of the beaker. Put nitrogen in the beaker, seal the top, connect the two copper wires to either side of your dynamo or battery. And wayhey light. From there refinement should be simple
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I could probably give a stab at the phone as well. On another point your great-great-great grandmother would be more impressed with a microlight, rather than a microwave. She already has things that cook food, but flying, now there is a magic
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A chemist friend of mine asserted he could have made penicillin in medieval times (specifically, the time of the Black Death, the 1340s). All he needed was some bread he could allow to get moldy, some ethylene acetate (which he claimed he could synthesize) and time.

Hey if only you could have told Edison, he only took some 10,000 stabs at the light bulb to get it working efficiently.

actually, for any usefull amount of light, may i suggest tungsten as a filament? it will burn longer, and brighter....and as for the antibiotics...a microscope would be needed in order to get the correct mold...and it is not the mold which kills the bacteria, it is secretians of this mold...does pennicillian even kill bubonic plague?

You wouldn't need a microscope. Just drop some mold in an agar plate of bacteria - does it kill the bacteria, or not? Then find a guinae pig and you are away Until later.....
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