system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If a piece of modern technology such as a mobile phone were sent back in time to say the 1940's, would it be possible for scientists to reverse engineer much of the technology?

This is a premise that appears a lot in sci-fi: a time traveller goes back in time and accidentally loses a device such as a mobile phone. Usually some stereotypical bad guy reverse-engineers the technology and takes over the world. 

My question is: using technology, equipment, and knowledge of science from the 1940's would it be possible to reverse-engineer the technologies such as semi-conductors, microprocessors, LEDs, etc. from a mobile phone?
gpt
I think folks are a little too pessimistic here. 

As the Cyberdyne scientist said in Terminator 2, "We didn't understand it, but it pushed our research in certain directions."

Just dissecting a cell phone battery might be enough for chemists to leap years ahead in rechargeable battery technology. And while CPU etching would be too small for optical microscopes to fully resolve, simply *knowing* that such electronic components were possible would push research into silicon components. And we would learn about the chemistry of LCDs or OLEDs, etc.

Engineering research is always going in lots of directions, only a few of which turn out to be both successful and marketable. Knowing that certain types of components based on certain underlying materials were likely to be successful could significantly guide research.