Did a 2036 Time Traveller really come back for this old IBM? | John Titor

on the menu today welcome and the name einstein just doesn't  suit you oh hello chip dippers welcome back   to retro recipes or if your name is john teeter  instead of einstein i should say welcome back   in time because yeah with halloween in the  air and the halloween computer right there thank you uh we're going to investigate the  fascinating story of john teeter who claimed   to be an american military time traveler sent  back from the year 2036 especially to obtain   a 1975 ibm 5100 computer for a very  specific and rather spooky purpose thank you that's not spooky at all this  is kind of serious you know along the way   tita warned us of an impending civil and  nuclear war and strangely i only found out   about this story after someone mentioned  it when they read my own time travel novel   the chrononaut now as you may know my book asks  what if so-called aliens are actually highly   evolved humans from earth's distant future and  so-called flying sources are their time machines so i was pretty stunned to see parallels  between tita's story and my own   including the claim that in his time they  still don't know what ufos are but they   think that they might be highly evolved humans  from earth's distant well yeah you get the idea she can see my reflection  in the halloween computer   or is she looking back in time well either way you  know is john tita's story about time travel just a   story like mine or could there be something more  real to it after all as stephen hawking said if   time travel was invented in the future wouldn't we  know about it by now wouldn't time travelers have   come back to tell us well let's just imagine for  a minute that they actually have we didn't believe   them so just for fun let's take tita's story and  its retro computing heart seriously because there   is one secret detail about the ibm 5100 that i  don't think he could have known in the year 2000   unless he was a time traveler so first we really  need to understand what the ibm 5100 was or is   what will be it's confusing it was released in  1975 at a cost of just 19 500 and one of the first   commercially available portable computers the cost  of the 5100 is reasonable now the price tag may   make more sense when you realize it's supported up  to the same amount of memory as the commodore 64   which wouldn't be released until seven years  later yep this thing really was ahead of its time you hear that and yes like the sx64 that would  follow the circus portable making it ideal for a   traveler or a time traveler it also featured  ibm's own 1.9 megahertz processor a 5-inch   monochrome display an internal 200 kilobyte tape  drive yep no floppy disks here and it ran basic or   apl now apl is a 1960s array-oriented programming  language that used graphic symbols to represent   its functions and as we all know apl stands for a  programming language no seriously it actually does   just as pcb stands for causal computer bank vault  yep if you need great quality pcbs that don't cost   19 and a half thousand dollars but actually just  five bucks then we recommend bcb way excuse me   yeah sorry about that but from pcb back to apl  apl was actually at the heart of tita's special   mission when he logged into a computer bulletin  board back in the year 2000 and posted this   now i know what you're thinking pull the other  one mate it's got bells on it but actually yeah   he did indeed post photos and very convincing ones  at that photos that to this day have never been   disproven now in his case the time machine was  mounted in a 1967 chevy rather than a delorean   now yes this might ring alarm bells as being just  a copycat of a well-known other certain story but   on the other hand life does imitate art take the  space force star trek logo for a tiny example   so let's suspend disbelief just for a moment  more because marty things are about to get heavy   indeed the suspicions faded for  tita when people had questions   and he had answers now yes in some  cases the answers were kind of vague   but in others he gave incredibly detailed  predictions of the future and it seems   several of them have come true over the 20 years  that followed first he stated the time machine   operated through the use of too many black holes  producing a gravity field but stephen hawking   believed many black holes were impossible  in response to skeptics tita had this to say but four years later hawking  sensationally retracted his theories   on black holes next tita posed a  seemingly strange question back in 2000 this didn't make much sense until perhaps  the columbia space shuttle disaster   four years later caused by a piece of the  shuttle's heat insulation breaking off   and he also described olympics being cancelled  albeit in 2004 and election voting being hacked   but of course other predictions haven't  materialized there was no american civil war well no actually i mean he said it would happen in  2004. anyway uh there's also been no nuclear war   in 2015 with russia but he had an oddly believable  reason for why none of that might come true   he invoked the many worlds interpretation  of quantum mechanics simply meaning that   he came from a different timeline to our own  and those events happened in his universe not   ours but perhaps what led to so many people  believing him at the time was his insistence that well now i i don't know what to  believe and you know back in 2000   with the more limited beginnings of the internet  and discussion forums on the web i can kind of   forgive people for becoming so absorbed in the  story with tita achieving almost cult-like status wow it really is the right model that's  crazy this is fantastic lift with your knees but okay why had he traveled back to 1975  to rochester minnesota specifically where   the machine was created to collect that  ibm 5100 well apparently his grandfather   was one of the creators of the machine and  had actually helped him obtain it back in time   and he'd stopped in 2000 to pay a visit for four  months while he also posted on these forums to   see his parents he went on to claim that back  home his military unit was responsible for   retrieving key items from the past that could help  them recover from that war and that ibm machine   was a key unit and crucially he stated that an  emp electromagnetic pulse had been responsible   for destroying all of their computers  and therefore any remaining ibm 5100s   even offered to take people back with  him to the year 2036 along with that ibm but the best part of the story is  coming right up see you in the future now for the really juicy part you see he  specifically claimed that the ibm was needed   to debug machines used in 2036 not really so  far fetched after all in 2002 nasa did the   same thing buying old medical tech on fleabay to  use as donor machines due to the intel 8086 chips   they contained which were needed to test rocket  boosters but here's that other detail i alluded   to that nobody really should have known about in  the year 2000 see at that time theta claimed this   now that isn't the part you couldn't have known  the 2038 problem is basically the new y2k bug   you see at 314 utc on the 19th of january 2038  which is 2.15 billion seconds after 1970 computers   still using 32-bit systems won't be able to cope  because they can't count higher than 2.15 billion   so they'll essentially suddenly think it's 1970  which could be a real problem for time-dependent   systems right right and tita crucially claimed  the 5100 had a special ability to read older languages and guess what he was right an engineer called  bob dub who had worked on the 5100 back in the 70s   came forward and for the first time publicly  confirmed this hidden feature he went on to   explain how the 5100 could actually emulate  programs in older ibm mainframe languages via   an ibm system360 assembly emulator hidden inside  it that emulator gave programmers access to the   functions of the huge 1960s mainframe computers  but in a portable form factor perhaps very handy   for a time traveler antita inferred that it would  allow you to drop into what he called legacy code   and essentially scoop out information now he never  stated exactly why but i could surmise from that   that because the 2038 problem revolves around  the year 1970 that there's something in that   1975 code because it can access older systems 1970  for example that they might have been able to use   to solve the 2038 problem now apparently back  in 1975 ibm kept the lid on the feature and   told engineers not to talk about it i reached out  to ibm's media relations department and they too   declined to comment for this very video so how  did tita know stuff in 2000 that ibm refused to   talk about in 1975 or today well i can think of  two explanations first it really was sent back by   a military time travel unit because all of their  5100s were destroyed by that emp weapon or he or   someone close to him worked for ibm knew about  that legacy code that was hidden away by them   and tita or whatever his name is used it to pull  off one of the ultimate and first internet hoaxes hey [ __ ] what are you doing trimming my bush   what are you actually doing cutting herbs oh  that's nice do you know i actually invented a   futuristic herb collector you  did yeah it's a time machine also these are herbs not herbs because they've  got a bloody h in them all right mr izzard and   as for tita's futuristic time aside from a  couple of twists we'll discover in a second   there's not much more i can tell you of that  story as this was his final message in 2001   the story kind of faded away until that is  2009 there a report by john huston of the   hoax hunter website accused larry haber a  florida entertainment lawyer as being the   ceo of the john teeter foundation that had  been set up to sell john teeter merchandise   suspicious lynch alleged that  larry and his brother maury haber   were john titor and get this he also alleged  that maury haber also referred to as john   rick haber was a computer scientist  so he might have known ibm's secret   so naturally i immediately emailed larry haber  and asked him all about it this was his response it's also been said that he is actually the  lawyer representing tita's family or estate   in the present time naturally i asked him if  that was true if he could give me more details   call me stubborn but i followed up  again to ask if jontita was real then just two years ago artist joseph matheny  creator of the alternate reality game hong's hat   that's right alternate realities claimed that  he worked as a consultant for the creators of   john teeter created as a literary experiment by  the people who were observing what he was doing   with ong's hat see at the time tita  himself claimed to have started to see   temporal divergences occur due to his  military units time travel football   games having different results for example  it makes me think of a certain sports almanac   but could posting about a nuclear war have averted  a nuclear war at least in our timeline or could   actually those allegations against him the hoaxers  themselves time travelers from the future who've   come back to try to correct the timelines but of  course tita's explanations for why his predictions   would not come true and his insistence that he  would rather not be believed could all just be   clever reverse psychology by the ultimate internet  prankster but personally i don't know about you   but i want to believe that a 1975 antique computer  a portable computer weighing 23 kilograms one day   really does save the world i guess only time  will tell well we'll be back sooner or later with   another retro recipe until then thanks so much  for watching subscribe and join below and cheerio you

Channel: Retro Recipes

Views: 452,118

Rating: 4.7633023 out of 5

Keywords: time travel, time machines, time traveller, John Titor, IBM 5110, APL, BASIC, Back to the Future, Theme tune, C64, System/360, geek girl, classic computers, retro computing, chiptunes, vintage computers, documentary, computer history, ASMR, emulation, retrospective, vintage, 8 bit, retro, IBM, Steins;Gate, Steins Gate, IBN 5100, Steins gate

Id: Jzj-mmo7qjw

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020

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[u/HarlodsGazebo]

I never knew this was a real thing that happened. Super interesting.