It's interesting to me because it implies that we can't make a huge technological leap forward. I like the point that one can't understand how to manufacture a material by studying the material.

When we think about the Chinese bootlegging products, there's obviously some time jump available through reverse engineering, but maybe that's more design than actual materials manufacturing.

Sure, on the time scales that military and high tech commercial technologies are important, a few years advance is not that difficult to reverse engineer and is relevant to their goals.

Tesla and Edison could reverse engineer that shit!

Tesla could have. Edison was a hack.

The mechanical parts can actually be manufactured relatively early in Northern Europe. Probably the 1300s. Mechanical clocks were mentioned in writings as far back as 1280. The Northern Europeans had a very good grasp of mechanization based off of water mills, partly why they industrialized so quickly they had all the components figured out just need to hook up to a different power source.

The problem is something to power the engine. The earliest possible would be with steam and you would be looking at more locomotive than car at that point.

Think about this, the prototypes for airplane wings (birds) have been around for a very long time and it took humanity forever to figure out how to fly. That doesn't require advanced manufacturing facilities either. I'm thinking we might be giving out ancestors too much credit. It's an interesting question though.

Sorry, but it's "truckin'"

I can't type a text with those little abbreviations, either. Cultural relevance is no excuse for bad grammar.

If a car was dropped into 1700 England, and it still worked, and they didn't ruin the carb, or drain the battery while playing around with it, would they be able to reproduce? No.

As was said earlier, technical advances would have been made in select areas by observation and testing; but mfg of working components....no.

People thoughout the ages have been as innovative and smart as our inventors today; ever since the western world mindset of patent ownership, its been the MATERIALS that have determined the rate of innovation.

When I was in the composite industry, we made communication towers 300ft long that weighed 500lbs. Try making that in 1700 or 1850 of wood or cast iron or steel.

So what you're saying, then, is that we might as well not make contact at all with aliens. There's no huge upside for us. They're either going to be tech-savvy and view us as savages, or they're just going to go on the welfare rolls.

I loved the SiFi shows Stargate and Stargate Atlantis. However, one of the major flaws was they went through the galaxy picking up new technologies and 3 months later had it reversed engineered and creating power supplies and star vessels.

A better example may be "Interdependence Day 2. I've read that in the movie script...it's been twenty years since the aliens were defeated and left their technology all over the planet. Apparently, the humans can't figure out how the power technology works; but have managed to attach to our technology to make very powerful weapons. (Can't wait to see it.) Eventually, we would figure it out in the real world; but not for a very long time.

Is the car still running? Fresh gas and oil in it?

If people saw it in action, working, then i'd guess they'd figure it out mechanically kinda quick. If the car isn't operative, then i'd imagine it'd take much longer.

I have no idea what it takes to make Gas & oil, so i'd imagine that would be the biggest limiting factor. Mechanically, i doubt it would take long to figure out at all.

After thinking about this awhile I'd say 1950. The few computer circuits in the car would be a complete fail. No idea what would make any of them work. The 8 track player would never be figured out.

Bullshit question.

They only built the deloreon until '83.