What's the best item of kit to take back in time to cause maximum astonishment?

LED bike lights would have seemed like magic until recent times

- Dr Hutch

One of my favourite ancient anecdotes concerns a group of country women in County Galway on Ireland's west coast in the 1870s. They were making their way home shortly after dusk one evening with baskets of produce, when coming towards them they saw half-a-dozen glowing lights, hovering mysteriously above the bogland.

The lights came closer, in eerie silence. It was clearly the devil and five of his helpers. Terrified, the women took refuge in a ditch full of brackish water. When the lights finally came upon them, they turned out to be attached to the penny-farthings of the Galway CC club run. Like something out of Father Ted, the women rose from the ditch and pelted the riders with potatoes.