Slashdot Mirror


1928 Time Traveler Caught On Film?

Many of you have submitted a story about Irish filmmaker George Clarke, who claims to have found a person using a cellphone in the "unused footage" section of the DVD The Circus, a Charlie Chaplin movie filmed in 1928. To me the bigger mystery is how someone who appears to be the offspring of Ram-Man and The Penguin got into a movie in the first place, especially if they were talking to a little metal box on set. Watch the video and decide for yourself.

38 of 685 comments (clear)

  1. Re:OK, I'll bite. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe it's a satellite-phone...

  2. Re:OK, I'll bite. by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Imagine the roaming charges on that call...

    --
    People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
  3. Re:OK, I'll bite. by Penguinisto · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe it's a sat phone, like an Iridium phone?

    Either way, the roaming charges have got to be a royal bitch...

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  4. OCCAM'S RAZOR, MAN by gaspar+ilom · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nuh-uh: "Time traveler w/ cell phone" is the simplest explanation.

  5. tachyon communication device by danlip · · Score: 4, Funny

    Clear not an actual cell phone, but a tachyon communication device that allowed her to communicate with her native time frame. Duh.

  6. Re:Verizon's Network Was So Terrible in 1928 by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow. They really should create a separate section of Slashdot for these ridiculous stories.

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  7. Re:Western Electric Hearing Aid ca. 1925 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We just slashdotted the hearing aid museum...

  8. I saw that episode by praedictus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't worry!!! She will get hit by a car and Kirk cant save her or else the Nazis will take over.

    --
    Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
  9. Not practical by Palestrina · · Score: 2, Funny

    Do have any idea what the per-minute fees are for time travel voice plans? And let's not talk about the data rates. The person on the film is clearly connecting via a local Wifi hotspot.

  10. Re:Verizon's Network Was So Terrible in 1928 by Zeek40 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well, if they can send one person back in time, why couldn't they send all the towers, lines, servers, power plants running them and support staff necessary to operate those phones back?
    Once we master time travel, moving several million tons of copper, steel, electronics, generators, etc. through the time portal should be easy.

    The real question is why is my cell phone bill so high when that film demonstrates that it's obviously 80+ year old technology.

  11. Re:Verizon's Network Was So Terrible in 1928 by Abstrackt · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wow. They really should create a separate section of Slashdot for these ridiculous stories.

    Great idea! Maybe we could even give it a descriptive name like "Idle" so people know to avoid it.

    --
    They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
  12. Not impressed at all. by Darth_brooks · · Score: 4, Funny

    Completely unimpressive. can't tell if it's a phone or not.

    Although, the blue police call box that the person walked in to was interesting. Seemed bigger on the inside than on the outside....

    --
    There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
  13. Lip reading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Looks like he's saying "Sam, why haven't I leaped?!"

  14. Re:Verizon's Network Was So Terrible in 1928 by ColdCuts · · Score: 3, Funny

    Worse would be the cell phone company's charges. The minutes would certianly be billed under a time 'roaming' plan. But worse, they would be instantly overdue, and with interest and late fees accumulating, a 300 year trip to the past with a quick call to brag about your journey would bankrupt the poor traveler.

  15. Re:Western Electric Hearing Aid ca. 1925 by nschubach · · Score: 2, Funny

    They may need some kind of device to filter out the excess noise so people can clearly read the site.

    --
    Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
  16. Re:Prime Directive! by psyclone · · Score: 3, Funny

    Not only that, but his disguise was a woman!

  17. iphone 4G!!! by E+IS+mC(Square) · · Score: 3, Funny

    Nope. It's clearly an iphone 4G. See how s/he is holding it!!

  18. iPhone 4 by Kaldesh · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, we can clearly see that it's not an iPhone 4, else holding it with her left hand would kill the signal.

    1. Re:iPhone 4 by Kaldesh · · Score: 2, Funny

      *facepalm* That would explain the black hole that just formed in my office and consumed my co-worker. Poor fool, that's what he gets for taking my seat!

  19. iPhone by andrewa · · Score: 2, Funny

    it can't be an iPhone, she's holding it wrong....

    --
    :(){ :|:& };:
  20. My Plan to confuse future people... by jameskojiro · · Score: 3, Funny

    1. Go to Vancouver or LA.
    2. Find a scene that is being shot in some random TV show.
    3. Walk by the scene pretending to use some futuristic device.
    4. Repeat this several times with different looking "devices", ie polished pieces of dark coloured plexiglass.
    5. Wait 80 years...
    6. Laugh my head in a jar off when I get the Slashdot brain download that proof of time travelers exist in old footage of CSI: New York.

    --
    Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
  21. Re:Western Electric Hearing Aid ca. 1925 by amliebsch · · Score: 5, Funny

    4) She's talking to a hologram of a man from her own time that only she can see and hear, as she puts right what once went wrong.

    --
    If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
  22. Re:OK, I'll bite. by modecx · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, I've always thought that a people capable of time travel would also develop what I see as final evolution of the cell phone: C.A.C.T.U.S. (Colonic Audio Conduction Technology, Ultimately Sadomasochistic), an inter-chronologic audio communication device, in convenient suppository form. It vibrates your colon such a manner that sound waves travel up your spine, resonating the inner ear. It is, unfortunately, quite uncomfortable to wear.

    We all know from the Terminator movies that inorganic materials aren't compatible with the time-matrix anomaly--unless they're wrapped in flesh. So, there you go. Billions of future humans are destined to ram CACTUSs up their asses.

    --
    Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
  23. Re:No carrier by flappinbooger · · Score: 2, Funny

    Totally adds a new dimension to the "can you hear me now" bit.

    --
    Flappinbooger isn't my real name
  24. Re:OK, I'll bite. by ChairmanMeow · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can you hear me now?

    --
  25. If you look closely at the window... by agw · · Score: 2, Funny

    If you look closely at the window in the background, you will see the reflection of a DeLorean parked on the other side of the street.

  26. Re:OK, I'll bite. by kungfugleek · · Score: 5, Funny

    Given that it's a time traveler, I'd say, "Can you hear me then?

  27. Uh, Oh. The temporal commission... by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 2, Funny

    is going to have a cow over this one. Even records of Twonkies are a *big* no-no. People will be wiped out of existence. Verizon will revert back to GTE. Microsoft will have go out of business in the eighties and... H-e-e-e-e-y...

    --
    Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
  28. Re:OK, I'll bite. by Trails · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, it's obvious, it's been fixed with a sonic screwdriver. Universal roaming, you know.

    But I must say the Doctor has really let his standards for Companions slide...

  29. Universal Roaming by Tetsujin · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, that struck me as well. Where are all the cell towers?

    What, you never heard of Universal Roaming? She was calling via the time vortex, obviously...

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.
  30. Re:Sonic Screwdriver by Tetsujin · · Score: 2, Funny

    The answer is obvious. Dr. Who used his Sonic Screwdriver to modify the phone so that this previously unknown companion of his could talk to her family back in his own time. The odd appearance of the phone was the result of the Doctor's failed attempt to disguise it...

    It's not that he failed, really. It's a perception filter. It psychologically tricks the viewer into overlooking the device... But it has no effect on film cameras, of course.

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.
  31. Re:OK, I'll bite. by kellyb9 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Imagine the roaming charges on that call...

    GREAT SCOTT!

  32. Re:OK, I'll bite. by nomorecwrd · · Score: 2, Funny

    Many people (specially singers and actors) cover their ears to "hear themselves"

    Why is she doing that for a silent movie escapes me.

  33. Re:OK, I'll bite. by VanGarrett · · Score: 3, Funny

    This person has a goddamned time machine, and you automatically assume that her cellphone also requires a tower to get a signal?

  34. Re:OK, I'll bite. by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 2, Funny

    THEY HAVE A TIME MACHINE.

    They could get jobs at Siemens in the past and "develop" just such a hearing aid. Then it's a simple matter of vetting the ads until they get one that's juuust right.

    --

    ---
    ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
  35. Re:OK, I'll bite. by FriendlyPrimate · · Score: 2, Funny

    How the heck did you figure that out? Only someone from that time period could have known that it was a hearing aid. Hrm...

  36. Re:OK, I'll bite. by shugah · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why not, she's got 3000 "anytime" minutes.

    --
    If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
  37. Re:OK, I'll bite. by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, it wasn't. She's a time traveler, and she's talking into a communicator (to her fellow time-travelers, possibly in orbit) that is disguised as an early model Siemens hearing aid. The time traveler is dressed as an ugly old lady to avoid arousing suspicion.