The first thing I would do should I have been transported back to 1600, is to team up with a blacksmith. And then, we would both go about saving humanity from about two hundred and fifty years of absolute hell. I would ‘invent’, and pal blacksmith would produce, left and right shoe lasts. See picture. We might even with a bit of luck, cobble together a bicycle.
CAST IRON SHOE LAST
Anyway, the safety pin and the paperclip should not prove too arduous of tasks – to get off the drawing board so to speak. Then, from our sales of those inventions, we might have enough cash to hand in order to build a steam engine…locomotive that is. Finally, we would have to keep our fingers crossed that the witch-finder would leave us be, and not begin building those bonfires with a stake in the middle.