On or about November 02, 2000, that message was posted on a public internet forum by someone who first called himself Timetravel_0 and then later changed to “John Titor” when he moved to Art Bell’s BBS forum. Old geeks or computer historians will remember that the IBM 5100 Portable Computer was a 55-pound luggable with a built-in keyboard, five-inch CRT display and tape drive and was powered by a 16-bit PALM (Put All Logic in Microcode) processor. It predated the IBM personal computer by 6 years and, looking back, it’s hard to imagine so little computing power in a time machine, let alone one moving not only a person but a 1967 Corvette through time. Wait, what?
Yes, John Titor claimed his time machine (pictures here) or “stationary mass, temporal displacement unit powered by two top-spin, dual positive singularities" was first installed in the rear of a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette convertible and later in a 1987 truck having four-wheel drive (is time travel that rough?). If that design sounds familiar, it's similar to the DeLorean-based time machine in “Back to the Future” which was released in 1985 – before 2000 when Titor first went public but after 1975 when he allegedly picked up his 1967 Vette.Titor allegedly went back to his future on March 21, 2001, but left some information that was published in 2003 in “John Titor: A Time Traveler's Tale.” Unfortunately, most of the events he said would happen didn't actually happened -- there was no civil war brewing in 2004 and erupting in 2008; the Olympics in 2004 were not the last ones; the president in 2005 – George W. Bush – did not “try desperately to be the next Lincoln.”However, Titor’s name does show up again in 2016 when Donald Trump was nominated for president. In a nutshell (possibly an appropriate allegory), Trump’s uncle, John G. Trump, was rumored to be in possession of Nikolas Tesla’s time machine plans, which he allegedly passed to his nephew. On the night Donald Trump was nominated in Cleveland, lightning hit Trump Tower in Chicago -- signaling to some that the time machine had been activated ... a time machine that may have been used by John Titor. Those are some pretty remote dots to connect but, then again, we’re talking about a time machine powered by a 1975 minicomputer in a 1967 Corvette!
THE UNTOLD TRUTH OF 'TIME TRAVELER' JOHN TITOR
Read More: https://www.grunge.com/98398/untold-truth-time-traveler-john-titor/?utm_campaign=clip
THE UNTOLD TRUTH OF 'TIME TRAVELER' JOHN TITOR
Read More: https://www.grunge.com/98398/untold-truth-time-traveler-john-titor/?utm_campaign=clip
HIS SCIENCE CHECKED OUT MORE THAN YOU'D EXPECT
An everyday prankster wouldn't last ten minutes when confronted with real scientists ready to poke holes in his story. However, according to the Guardian, Titor "held his own against skeptical physicists." He even shared detailed schematics and photographs of his time machine, which were all surprisingly convincing. It soon became clear that if this John Titor guy was a prankster, he'd at least done his homework.
Every layer of Titor's story was there for a reason, including his seemingly contrived mission statement: though it might sound silly that scientists in the year 2036 would have any interest in collecting an antique IBM computer, the Minnesota newspaper Post Bulletin pointed out that Titor's explanation was based on facts. Basically, Titor's claim was that programmers in the future needed the old computer because it had a function that would give them access to a secret "memory code." Post Bulletin writer Patrick Stephenson interviewed one of the engineers of the original IBM 5100, Bob Dubke, who confirmed that this function existed. Crazy, right?
If Titor's story was a hoax, nitty-gritty details like this were the key ingredient. His mission was mundane enough and the scientific details specific enough that you had to wonder. This same logic applied to Titor's descriptions of society in the future, with forecasts rooted in contemporary fears.
Most observers believe the John Titor saga was a hoax, but no one has ever claimed the bragging rights for it. Nonetheless, interested parties have dug for answers. According to Pacific Standard, the most notable investigation was conducted by Voyager, an Italian TV series. Voyager's professional sleuths peeked into a for-profit LLC called the John Titor Foundation, which sells self-published collections of Titor's posts. The Foundation's CEO is a man named Lawrence "Larry" Haber. If that name sounds familiar, it's because Larry Haber is the same lawyer who represents Kay Titor, the woman who claims to be John's mother.
Read More: https://www.grunge.com/98398/untold-truth-time-traveler-john-titor/?utm_campaign=clip