I read a sci-fi short story about that once. A scientist brings back a guy from the future, but the guy either can't explain how things work or does so using a vocabulary the scientist doesn't understand.
It was like:
"How do you make a teleporter?"
"Well you take a zargnix and put it on top of a floon."
You can hack it by bypassing the torrax with a blaqu'ue injection, then you can easily teleport, even with the carglaian model by putting a zargnix on a floon
Years and years ago in some anthology or other. Sci-fi short stories are my favorite literary medium, so I've read far more than I could count. I wish I could tell you the name or the author.