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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.
Who was she talking to? (considering the lack of cell-phone towers)
Ugh.
And uh, what network was this cell phone connecting to? Because you know there's a series of cell towers and satellites that need to be in place for cell phones to work and I don't recall anyone having the foresight to erect such towers in 1928.
This is such utter drivel. The person in the picture could be scratching his/her head or shielding their ear from a breeze with something (my grandmother does similar things when the wind is strong and she wears a shawl). I don't see a black object, I see two of the fingers around what would be the 'top' of the phone which is uncharacteristically how people hold cell phones. I don't see any shock or expression on the face as they turn it just seems like Clarke is projecting what he wants on the viewer. It could just be a schizophrenic wandering around who is used to shielding their face and mouth when they can't control what they are saying.
It's ridiculous that time traveling is even suggested, let alone continually reinforced by George Clarke.
My work here is dung.
If so he did an awesome job of protecting the continuity of the timeline by not leaving many traces!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I wonder what network the were using in 1928? Marconi Wireless? (snicker)
Seriously, this has been in the media for days now. It's almost certainly someone using an old-style hearing aid.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Obviously it's not clear what kind of aid it is, specifically, but it looks like an old ear trumpet.
Like this thing.
On their best day, Slashdot readers would think of cell phone towers. I don't think there are any days this rabble would be intelligent enough to realize that any species or members of humanity from a time traveling society wouldn't need towers for their communication devices. Or would have very rapid means of deploying them from relatively small devices.
Slashdot reminds me of ignorant atheists who attack creationism on the same logical level that creationists attack atheism on.
It is an early carbonic (electric) hearing aid.
If arbitrary time travel is possible (which I personally highly doubt), by the time our technology advances to that level cell phones will be considered as ancient as the telegraph is today.
Grandma Titor was likely using one of these:
http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Carbon/WesternElectric/info/westelect34a.htm
It still doesn't explain why the person she's conversing with is INVISIBLE!!!
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
There is no clear device in the hand. It looks like they're talking to someone in front of them or themselves while holding their hat.
Nuh-uh: "Time traveler w/ cell phone" is the simplest explanation.
This was released in 1924:
http://hearing.siemens.com/sg/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?year=1924
Seems like it could easily be that.
-Valiss
Clear not an actual cell phone, but a tachyon communication device that allowed her to communicate with her native time frame. Duh.
I do not see a black device. I see an empty hand and a shadow.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
They had to have Schizophrenics back in the 20s, didn't they? Maybe she was just talking to herself and cupping her hands over her ears in an attempt to block out the voices?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
hint: not a time traveler.
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.
The "cell phone" theory is a golden example of people projecting their own limited conception of the world onto something they don't recognize. Someone 40 years ago probably would've imagined that they saw someone singing along to a transistor radio. Someone from 120 years ago would've thought they saw someone listening to a seashell and chewing gum. If she's really holding something (IMO the video isn't clear enough to be sure), it's almost certainly a contemporary hearing aid.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
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.
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.
It looks to be an old lady, so its entirely possible that what he is seeing is something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ardent_hearing_aid.JPG which is part of this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkney_Wireless_Museum also seen here http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/objects/display.aspx?id=6713
Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Maybe she is adjusting one of those horn looking hearing aids from back in the days. like this one
Could be a Time phone, or an alien dressed in an old lady human suit....
From some quick Googling:
Telephone invented: 1876 (Alexander Graham Bell)
Cellphone concept: 1915 (American Telephone and Telegraph)
Cellphone invented: 1973 (Motorola)
Looking at those dates, it doesn't seem out-of-the-question that some kind of wireless telephone could have been around by 1928, albeit not used by the public. I'm sure there are technologies currently in use by our security services, law enforcement agencies, etc, that won't reach the public market for many years. And I'm sure the same was happening back in 1928.
Perhaps the person in the video was, for example, a detective following someone and reporting their whereabouts. Less exciting that a time traveler, alien or some kind of covert military "black ops" explanation. But an explanation all the same.
It appears to me after doing a 5 minute google search, that this appears to be a French Electric "Camera" as seen in the middle of this page.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
People get freaked out be imagining or misidentifying things in old images all the time. Remember people freaking out over a sweater in an old picture? Yeah, sweaters have been around for a long time.
Somebody holding their hand up near their hat and their fingers crooked and moving, no biggie either. I didn't see any shot clear enough to make out something in the hand, just a shadow under the hat.
Now if you want to analyze that, why would a time traveler blatantly use advanced tech while knowingly being recorded? Why would someone holding a phone/radio/other audio based gadget be wiggling the fingers like that? As this was a film, they are filming people they know and have instructed to do those things in front of the camera, why would someone who doesn't fit in be allowed to wander through a closed set in front of the camera during filming while apparently talking to themselves while holding something near their head when film was very expensive, and the film cameras of the time could only record for a few minutes at a time?
There's no freaking way that was a time traveler, or a cell phone, or a walkie talkie, or anything else that is chronologically displaced, other than some peoples imagination.
If there are any time travelers reading this, please come and tell me how wrong I am. Let's meet up at the Carl's Junior in the food court of the Gateway mall at 3:30pm last monday. Don't be late, I was there.
PS: bring strawberries.
THIS isn't from the documentary about The Circus, it was actually filmed in 1929 by the famous filmmaker Colin McKenzy. The woman is really talking into the 20s equivalent of a cellphone. The (tense) dual hemp line connecting her ~phone~ to that of a person probably trailing 10 or so meter behind her can clearly be seen in some of the slow motion. It was just another of McKenzy's innovations. The "circus" sign in the background was clearly shopped into the picture! Check Peter Jackson's documentary about Colin McKenzy called "Forgotten Silver" if you don't believe me.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Seriously, that would mean that time travel is so close that cell phones won't change considerably. The chance of that is even smaller than that for time travel per se.
We are pattern-matching machines. We see and interpret in practically the same thought. We are used to people using cell phones like that, so that is what we think we see.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This is genius. I've never heard of this guy, George Clarke, but now by mentioning his work at the beginning of the video, he's got a great viral marketing campaign!
Of course he doesn't believe a word of it, but he managed to get word to spread of his silly little video, and thus free advertising for his work. Pure genius!
It's a transistor radio.
It reminds me of an occurrence one night while I was working as a hospital security officer on nights. A man came in breathless to our office, and asked to speak to Sergeant D* (I don't recall the full last name). We told him he didn't work with us. The man said that the Sergeant was supposed to be there, he was running from the CIA, and had to speak to him. We responded that Sergeant didn't exist. The man then bolted and ran away from us. It kind of shook my world, and I can't stop thinking... did I just ensure the destruction of mankind, by running this guy off?
I imagine this alleged time traveler's reception must have been terrible
The reception is fine. The lag is a bitch though.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Looks like he's saying "Sam, why haven't I leaped?!"
Simple solutions... shes either a crazy old lady talking to herself with her hand up for whatever reason, shes chewing gum, or this is "B" roll that the DVD authors used for the extra feature, and this particular footage just happened to have some women on her phone.
It would make a good aspect of a Sci-Fi story, cell phones function on their time of origin, regardless of what time the physical handset is in.
Won't someone close to 'that' which calls itself 'samzenpus' please end our suffering and remove that hack from this plane of existence?
For fucks sake, it is a constant barrage of chewed over, stale, incorrect, unchecked, "Bigfoot-sighting", irrelevant, pathetic excuse for "news" not even fit for a schoolgirl's blog.
What's next? That story about that guy who recently found the image of Jesus (that looks like a Dalek) in the rings of a fallen tree?
Or a "news story" about canals on Mars?
How about a link to a blog claiming a scientific basis to the reading of tea leaves?
Jon Katz was at least... well... you could laugh at him.
This pus guy on the other hand is simply intellectually insulting.
*Stakes are free and biodegradable. Plates, silver or otherwise are neither.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Precisely! There are no cell towers in 1928, not to mention no technology capable of even remotely replicating one, so it couldn't be a cell phone. That's not to say it's not (possibly) some form of small communication device. But there's no clear image of what's in his/her/it's hand. Now if there was a Motorola or Nokia logo clearly visible, I'd be singing a different tune!
Assuming it is a time traveler, they would probably have had to originate before todays date, because after todays date they'd know about this issue and be able to avoid it. I just don't think we have the technology for manipulating gravity, much less space time.
Another issue is that people have been getting taller evolution-wize over the past roughly 100 years. So you most likely wouldn't see someone VERY short and chubby from the future. Actually the build of the person is pretty much exactly what one would expect for that time period.
If they had Nike's on then it would be a whole other story. But all I see is someone from a silent film pretending to talk while holding something to their ear, which looks to me to possibly be a small portable radio. But I don't think battery or radio technology was at that level for that time either.
I stopped watching when he said: "it can't be an AM/FM radio, obviously, because it's 1928" ... so obviously it's a time traveler with a cell phone, that's the only logical conclusion.
It is part of human nature to see patterns in randomness. We see someone talking with their hand to their ear, and we automatically think, cell phone. In the 1928, they would have thought, mental patient. For all we know this person is heading to the doctor because of an ear ache. As others have pointed out, there are no cell phone towers. If I must defy logic, then I would say this person is talking to their mothership, and telling them it's too soon to cause the stock market to crash. Give it a year.
That dude is a moron. Unless there was another traveler, and they took a cellphone network (tower and all) who was she talking to, and over what?
Who was she talking to? (considering the lack of cell-phone towers)
Ugh.
Not that I believe in this, but if you were time-traveling to the past to be an extra in a Charlie Chaplin movie (which is a plausible thing for any film buff), it's perfectly reasonable that such a person would whip out their cell phones just to be filmed pretending to talk on it. They could then point it out to their friends once they return to their time.
that got killed like all his stuff. It utilized his one tower in Wardenclyffe that would provide coverage for the entire world. Edison developed a competing product that would rely on Wall St. providers (ie; future carriers). The woman is talking to Nikola himself (the only other device owner) and he is explaining his premonition that AT&T service is going to suck.
Next thing you know he'll say Garry Owen was using a cell phone during Laugh-In.
I don't frequent all that many news aggregator sites, but it seems that lately, most of the submissions getting through to the front page were on other sites days or weeks before.
This article, the ones from earlier today on the 'liberal gene', the primate fossils in Asia, CIA investments, the first photograph of a human, the home-built Batmobile, the Australian impact crater - and so on. I've seen these all on one of the following sites in the past week or so on either digg, fark or extragoodshit.phlap.net (which is quite NSFW, but still a very good news/aggregator site, and currently my favorite; the boobies don't hurt his cause any. I highly recommend it with or without the boobies).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
OK, it's clearly not a cell phone since, as others have pointed out there was no network. She might as well be talking into her purse.
Probably not a hearing device of any sort, since there was no one else in the vacinity that she could have been talking to.
Most likely explanation:
Scarier even still is the fact that CNN devoted air-time to this joke of a story.
could she be holding a bag of ice to her aching tooth?
I'm just going to re-post these here, because everyone has their own thread going on...
A) Cell Service - It is entirely plausible that the time travel 'ship' is providing the service for the device. She could be talking to either another traveler on a similar device or the ship could be relaying the signals back home.
B) Hearing Aid - While this is possible, you can pretty clearly see that she at least thinks that the device is interactive. Body language at 4:12 looks conversational to me. Something caused her to break her stride, speak more emphatically, and resume. Hard to imagine a hearing aid doing that. If one were surprised by the output from a hearing device, one would likely make LESS sound, rather than more. Right?
C) Device Age/Design/etc - The distance between the ear and the mouth defines the size of a cell phone, as modified by other features like fitting comfortably in the hand or pocket. None of these things are likely to change for humans, well, ever. You'd have to go far enough into the future where we'd no longer recognize the species for it to change the size of a cell phone. It isn't like people can't or don't make dime-sized phones (there's even talk of one in a tooth). They are just a bitch to actually use.
There is no thin black device in her/his hands, the guy is full of bullshit.
Nope. It's clearly an iphone 4G. See how s/he is holding it!!
Well, we can clearly see that it's not an iPhone 4, else holding it with her left hand would kill the signal.
Your Memories Will Be Rewritten: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/memory/
"A person in the background holding what some say is a cell phone in this still from Charlie Chaplin's 1928 film The Circus. "
I hardly recognise a person in it, that's how bad the quality is. And then those two pixels would be a cellphone?
Because everyone knows that the direct neural interfaces for Cell Phones will show up in the early 2030's. So this time traveller is probably from the late 2020's or very early 2030's.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
It's the Verizon guy's grandfather.
Apparently the grandfather has the has the same congenital malformation that worked to the advantage of his grandson, Mr. "Can you hear me now".
When we ran out of IPv4 address we realize it would be easier to scrap everything and create a new mesh based network to run IPv6. So really this movie proves that there were at least two time travelers!
He's adjusting his glasses. He's holding the bar on the left that connects the lookamajigs to the ear-holder-onners.
However the glasses appear to be Mary Kate and Ashley brand, so he's still from the future.
Really? Really???? Just scanning the multitude of /. posts I see at least three plausible possibilities. Are slashdotters that much smarter or are people in Belfast mentally defective?
I'm more worried about the giant, 8ft tall zebra standing there.
What? Perspective is important these days?
...when you get to the past, call me and I'll tell you how to get back!
By old-style hearing aid you mean: cup your hand at your ear and shout "EEH! What was that, sonny?"
it can't be an iPhone, she's holding it wrong....
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...
Can you hear me now?
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Winner for "Best Viral Advertisement for a Charlie Chaplin Film"?
If you have an iDen phones and you are were there is no towers then you can still use them "ad-hoc" for lack of knowing the technical term.
I know people are saying that most likely a time traveler would have a smaller hidden phone, which just 5 years ago I think is the direction everybody pictured the phone of the future to be, i.e. hidden in our teeth or built into our body somehow, or even a simple cell phone watch. Reality is that we moved in a different direction and that is an all in one computing device/phone. If you are going to have a small iPhone/Droid sized device as a computer anyway why have a second phone device, even if it was built into a tooth or something.
Now you could argue that phones will be integrated into our heads and computer screens into our eyeballs . But in the near future I don't think it is that unrealistic to think communication and computing devices will be one device. Think it will taken something interesting to get us to use 2 separate devices again.
Let's assume that it is a time traveler with some sort of communication device... for communicating through time or with a fellow time traveler. Wouldn't the same time traveler have seen this story, and then not make the same mistake so that the story wouldn't exist?
Look around for a blue box.
Alternatively....a DeLorean.
http://hearing.siemens.com/sg/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?year=1924
Sorry, probably not time travel.
EAR TRUMPET.
http://www.oldsouthbooks.com/images/DSC00481.JPG
You are welcome.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Observers were here
That is an undercover policeman or security guard talking into the handpiece of a portable tube radio. The main radio is concealed in either the handbag or under the bulky costume. No time traveller needed.
Admittedly, the first record I can find of portable tube radios is from 1936 in England, but at this time multiple people in multiple countries were independently inventing the same things at nearly the same time. As you know, often technology used by police and defence forces is not well publicised because "secret weapons against crime" get a lot of power from being secret.
That reminds me of that picture of the time traveling hipster from 1941 we saw back in April.
http://forgetomori.com/2010/fortean/time-traveler-caught-in-museum-photo/
I don't know what it is, but I know its not a cell phone. The lady in question appears to be the same age as my mother. She lives in the era of cell phones and has trouble because there is no rotary thing, just buttons; ergo, this old lady can not be using a cell phone or a time travel device. (unless the buttons were really big)
So let's say for the sake of just going through this exercise without debunking the movie or photos, or whatever, and we all accept that this is real.
We now know in the nearby future (as in the far future we will all be using devices smaller then cell phones to communicate),
we will have been able to time travel.
1) we need to start setting up programs and international laws built to supervise and control who can time travel and to what purpose...
going back to get better grades grades so that you could get into harvard instead of a dumb college.....or to avoid that collision which took your legs, or
(fill in your case here) seems to me would cause unimaginable harm to the present time line, creating deviations upon deviations.
2) once a governing body is in place to secure time traveling as a whole....we need to start trying to set up a plan to figure out which disaster we can go ....do not let the fire happen on the platform, and set up
back and help avoid or improve upon....like the gulf BP oil spill, which can be avoided if we
better security polices back then before the spill happened and nip it in the bud.
3) we also need to decide do we allow to go into our future, and thereby again creating special time paradoxes,
where someone brings back the formula for a new type of steel (1000 times cheaper and stronger then regular steel)
or do we block all future time travel all together.
I think we have seen a big lack of time traveling movies lately, because there is a sort of taboo now associated with it, maybe because
the government wants us to not think about that possibility too much....and avoid pondering those cases altogether.
They will push everything for getting space travel, let you build your own rocket in your backyard if you want...(billy bob)
but so far, the last movie I saw where the time travel repercussions were visible was an old movie with edward burns
where they touch something in the past, and contaminate the environment with a future microbe, which changes everything as they know it...
Anyways....funny if this were a joke, but everyone accepted it was real!
She probably sees the camera, doesn't want to be filmed, and is holding her wallet up to cover her face.
Or perhaps they are using some big ass lighting and its blinding her.
But I think a wallet is more sensible an answer than a cellphone.
Besides, this thing SCREAMS viral marketing.
I'll give it 7 out of 10 for being an interesting hook.
You've got to admit that the circumstances of the 9/11 incident were fairly suspicious. A few days prior to the attack they had an evacuation drill in the towers that was out of the ordinary, the attack occurred during a time of day when most of the people who worked in the towers were not in the building, another building that was not struck by a plane collapsed, and the buildings collapsed in a way that was consistent with the way that buildings collapsed during controlled demolitions when there are explosives planted on each floor at key structural points.
I would seriously not be surprised if the Bush family helped the terrorists co-ordinate their attack in order to create a pretense for war that would allow them to tighten the federal government's hold on national security and drive oil prices through the roof.
He says it's obviously not an AM/FM radio because it's 1928. That's a strange thing to say considering he thinks it might be a cell phone.
She's certainly dressed like she belongs in 1928.
Anyway, Doctor Who was able to let Rose Tyler call her mom from like 10 million years in the future...maybe she's a different incarnation of The Doctor.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
...mugging the camera and yammering. I gave up before the end.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
At first look it appears to be someone calling in a cell phone. However there many simpler and better explanations for the women's posture.
Seems like someone picked the "Leave behind a blatant anachronism" option two polls ago.
Do you notice how that story only appears after that poll ?
Obviously, that poll gave ideas to some slashdotter with a time machine. And the cell phone couldn't be seen before because it simply wasn't there in the original timeline.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Totally adds a new dimension to the "can you hear me now" bit.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
It is pretty wild to see but come on, if she was really talking on a cell phone/satellite phone: a) was there capable towers and satellites at that time to even communicate with b) why isn't no one freaking out that some lady is talking on a "future device" It was probably a two way radio or other device. Most of that stuff was around in the early 1920's.
Bryan
One possibility is that Charlie Chaplan filmed this to make it appear that someone was doing what was impossible back then. They did have phones so the idea of a communication device you carry isn't improbable in that year. Maybe he was doing this as gag and it's taken people this long to notice it..?
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
They were making hearing aids years and years before this footage was shot, considering the age of the person I would place my bet on that.
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.
I would think the problem of *holding* something to my ear would
have been solved already.
I was going to reply that is was the Doctor, but someone could type faster than me. Unfortunately they didn't note that the person is the 15th Doctor's companion. "When" I'm typing this from, we're on the 15th one. "Googletime" beta tester
The DVD conversion certainly is a lossy process... if they could get the original film to look at frame-by-frame, you could certainly see a ton more detail, which might let you clarify if she's holding anything at all.
Contact the studio. It'd be great promo for them!
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
You would think people with the technology to travel through time wouldn't even need a phone. Hell, we don't even need to hold a phone to our heads today. A nearly invisible headset will do the job just fine. I suppose it could have been a voice recorder, but again why the need to hold a device to the head?
What it looks to me is like an older woman shielding her eyes from the sun and some guy with a hyperactive imagination. Or a guy with quite a talent at special effects and a good sense for keeping things just subtle enough that people wont be quick to dismiss it. And in either case the guy is likely looking for his 15 minutes of fame and a springboard for his career.
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...
There is also the time travel paradox that if someone did time travel (I personally don't think they did) and was seen on video, they could simply go back in time again and get themselves out of the video thus it would have never happened and YouTube would happily go on showing stupid cat tricks today. IF (and that is a bing IF) this is some sort of communication device then I would assume it was an alien in disguise. The fellow does point out that it is a very 'butch' woman. I think a little grey could easily sneak under that heavy coat. Personally I think it is something mundane that is common in the era. The guy who walks past her doesn't bat an eye. I still give a double take to people on Bluetooth headset when I don't see it so I am sure a lady talking into an ear box would turn some heads.
$2.50 for a decade.
I'm going with, she is holding a cell phone and the footage is fake and was included as the "bonus" material to get the super deluxe extreme edition of the DVD.
Like, I can totally accept the possibility of time travel, but a mobile communication device with no cell towers? Unpossible.
include $sig;
1;
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.
What's even more incredible is the zebra standing there the entire time.
Do radioactive cats have 18 half lives?
And what the woman was saying was "Oh my teesh, hurt sho mush. "
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
It is the Napoleon of time crime: Moriarty!
How about a wireless transmitter/receiver? did they have handheld walkie talkies around this time?
So if it was a cell phone, the guy walking in front of her doesn't notice her talking to somebody? This day and age, someone just talking and nobody is there you readily assume that they're on their phone. Back in the 1920s she would have been considered a mad woman talking to spirits.
Theoretical physics would suggest it is an inter-dimensional traveler rather than a time traveler. Not that there is any evidence either is possible. In theory it takes an enormous amount of negative energy to time travel. It would be conceivable to punch through to an alternative dimension with less work. Basically I'm not aware of any theories about inter-dimensional travel that don't involve becoming evil, cheesy beards and reversing your clothes. The other dimension may have developed cell phones, or equivalent, and inter-dimensional travel before 1920's. Then the cell phone would obviously be connected through the rift to the other dimensions towers. This also limits roaming charges as there is no requirement that the tower be physically a far.
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.
Mobile communication devices 100 years or even 20 years from now may look substantially different than the current cellphone. Remember the getting-of-prison joke in Wall Street 2? I suspect they'll be arbitrarily small, embedded, and voice-controlled. Similar to the difference between original and new-generation Star Trek communicators.
Could this be just a bored film transfer tech inserting a bit of an anachronism into this extra footage?
If I went around claiming I was an emperor...they'd put me away!
http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/did/20thcent/index.htm
Although from the video it does look like shes smiling/talking to the device?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
We give time to someone who isn't even smart enough to rip a DVD?
--sitharus
But if this really was a time traveler on a cell phone in 1928, isn't that how it would work out?
What if the footage was of a lady wearing a "I love Joss Whedon" baby doll t-shirt, or a shirt that said "All your base are belong to us!" or t-shirt that said, "I'm a Slashdot Karma Whore!"?
30 to 40 years ago we wouldn't have thought anything about a t-shirt like the above if we saw it in old footage. We'd probably just assume it was some saying or something from back in the day.
If there was a time traveler, there's a span of time where we wouldn't see anything out of place with the footage, but then we pass a point in time where we would recognize that their is something in the footage that is out of place. Then our brains would recognize the t-shirt for what it is and say "How did that get to 1928?"
bad actors never know what to do with there hands
Never trust a woman with large feet ...
Note that the current Doctor Who has gear which allow his companions to use their cell phones no matter where/when they are... :-) Also, I have the same collection as shown on the clip and it really DOES look like someone today talking on their mobile! I just now checked it out... LOL!
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Wow, and given that she can only travel to times within her own lifetime, she must be frickin' old!
"Granny Leap" probably wouldn't have done so well in the ratings.
She's not actually from Quantum Leap, though: she's from the crappy trial version they did on Battlestar Galactica. Things work mostly the same as on Quantum Leap, except she can't actually see her assumed face when she looks in the mirror, and her invisible friend is a largely-useless alien who has transcended physical form, she blows her cover immediately and only manages to set things right by ending the entire charade.
Bow-ties are cool.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204686/ - and Timescape of course: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104362/
This is a woman walking behind her husband. She is covering her face because she sees the camera and is telling her husband to slow down. He of course walks faster because she's talking again.
The problem is all those cool techs are patented. This was open source time travel.
Remember how The Doctor left messages for Sally Sparrow in the...future..no..past..well, anyway...time is confusing, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey etc.. Anyway, he hid an Easter Egg in the extra features of all the DVDs that she owned. And of course, he only knew which DVDs she owned because she gave him a list after he'd done it in her timeline, but before he'd done it in his timeline, and the only reason she had the list was because someone else had noticed the Easter Eggs, not her...
Think 1920. She's adjusting a hatpin. As for the talking, to someone out of frame.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
And he's testing iPhone 7, which has been in development for a while now.
a 1924 Siemens was held the same way: http://hearing.siemens.com/sg/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?year=1924
All I got from that video was "I hope this video goes viral so I can use it to advertise my movies."
to whom was she saying that? there was nobody in the vicinity.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
in a silent movie. Now that is funny :-)
In the days before electronic hearing aids, they used ear trumpets.
It looks odd to us because noone uses them anymore, but back then they would have been common for deaf people.
She is probably listening to the film crew telling her what to do.
For a while, the carbon amplifier patented by Siemens played a major role in hearing aid technology and significantly raised the volume of hearing aids.
think that she might just be a crazy lady holding a small hair brush and talking to herself? I mean we have plenty of people downtown by me that do stuff like that all the time.
Did anyone see "The Messenger"? I know someone here must have, it had Milla Jovovitch as Joan of Arc. In her prison cell, Joan is talking to Dustin Hoffman, who is, I suppose, the Devil or something. She explains that she found a sword in a field, and it must be a sign from God. The Devil -- or at least his advocate -- puts forth a number of theories from the plausible to the ridiculous that would also explain the finding without resorting to a supernatural explanation.
This scene is about all I could think of as this "filmmaker" states that an anachronistic cell phone is the only possible explanation for a woman with her hand to her head, perhaps with an object in it.
But now that I think of it, the Devil arguing against the supernatural is sort of strange, too.
I am not a crackpot.
But the crossdressing time traveler had the great benefit of reading this trenchant thread on /. while in grade school. S/he is reading this message right now while looking forward to the finale of Project Runway tonight. Oh the horror of the fashion choices that await her in the future in the past!
We should have time travel soon. I bet the iPhone5 will have an app for that.
So because you're not able to skip past a tabloid-style story that results in some harmless speculation about time travel, you're advocating that someone kill the slashdot employee?
Really??
It's because I'm too far away to do that myself.
Also, I do believe that there are people out there who would do it for free. $10 is more like for beer or coffee afterwards.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Seems everyone is trying to explain this away as not possibly being time travel.
Haven't any of you seen Forest Gump?
Explain to me how Tom Hanks managed to make THAT movie if not via time travel!
I rest my case!
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Nothing surprising to me in this video. I also saw a woman pressing her jaw with a handkerchief, and I thought "This person just got out from the dentist's cabinet".
She is clearly cupping her ear in order to hear the person speaking to her off camera.
She's hard of hearing -- not a time traveler.
small ear trumpet as hearing aid, she isn't "talking" she is saying, "what? what? what? I BEG you Pardon!??!" http://www.phisick.com/images/ent/silver-ear-trumpet-small-102.jpg
It is an ear trumpet. http://www.phisick.com/images/ent/silver-ear-trumpet-small-102.jpg
This mode of thinking is so common it has a name, the logical fallacy represented here is called "The Argument from Ignorance".
Basically it's summed up by saying "we can't say for sure what "x" is, therefore I know exactly what "x" is"
There is ZERO evidence that the person is holding ANYTHING to his/her ear, no less an electronic device, no less a cell phone, and no less by a time traveler.
I would advocate applying the logical principle of Occams Razor, but it's not even useful here either, because there's no question beyond "what is that person holding" and the only reasonable answer is "how the hell should I know?"
Looks pretty obvious to me the lady has arthritis and is scratching her temple just where her hat touches. Not an uncommon act. The arthritis explains the shape her fingers take. Nothing to see here, move along...
Saw the same thing over at Geekologie a couple of days ago.
What surprised me more is how out-of-place the large pic at http://planet-flipside.com/index.php/paranormallink/60-timetraveller looks (lower right corner, next to the old guy).
I see two of the fingers around what would be the 'top' of the phone which is uncharacteristically how people hold cell phones.
Maybe she is a relative of Steve Jobs.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The dude with the crown and cell-phone made out of Coke cans is *obviously* talking to someone.
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
I can't believe that slashdot posts stories like this. It is obviously fake and just a case of a good coincidence that people read to much into. That is all
I wonder... if I hold my foot to my head, will someone in 100 years think I'm a time traveller too?!
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
[ST8Z6FR57ABE6A8RE9UF]
It's actually gun. They photoshopped it to look like a cell phone for the re-release.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The footage starts around 2:40 - I can't believed he managed to stretch almost 3 minutes of boring in to lead up to it.
Union Square in New York City
When time travel eventually becomes possible, I'm quite sure we'll have progressed past hand-held mobile communicators of this sort (like we did a long time ago, and only use them now for convenience really), and any savvy time traveller would know not to use one in public anyway. So what has obviously happened here is that at some point in the future, there's some kind of Y2K type disaster waiting to happen and the only way they can avert it is to use a specific kind of technology only used in the original 1924 Siemens carbon amplifier. So the time traveller went back to 1928 (a few years after release so she could be sure there'd be sufficient availability), and wanted to test it to make sure it was working before bringing it back to the future. And that's when she was caught on film! In your face, time traveller!!
talking to Al.
If she is from the future, why is she in black and white? She should be in color.
My idea, she is a crazy person. Yes, there were crazy people... prior to cell phones causing brain damage. :D
it can be a little radio device and the man is listen a baseball game or a comedy show
It is obvious that she is covering her face either away from the camera or from sun light. And what she's holding is the collar of her coat.
I see people do that in cold places... pull up their collar to keep warm
There were hearing aids at the time which were large (compared to a modern hearing aid) things you held up to your ear. Large, rectangular, metal things. Shaped a bit like a cell phone.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Given the era and what appears to be clothing for a cold season, let us hypothesize for a moment that old methods of survival have been forgotten with the advent of newer technology.
:)
I have personally sewn the coils of a battery powered electric blanket into the lining of one of my jackets to make winter in Norway a bit more tolerable. I even ran some of them into the hood of the jacket. This keeps me nice and warm so long as the batteries last all through winter. I have the ability to run it on AA batteries as well as a few different rechargeable batteries. Thus far, I have had great success in temperatures well below zero degrees (you choose C or F).
If I were to stay warm on a old day in the 20's, while acid cells were in existence, they we huge, expensive, and frankly, not very powerful. The fact is, the warmth they might provide you would probably be gained just from the exertion of carrying enough of them to run the blanket jacket for 10 minutes. Let's also point out that nichrome wire was not being produced as of yet. So, if you happened to have a means of generating heat, it most likely was through an extremely heavy, wire wound resister. Again, not likely useful for flexibility.
Let us instead suggest that a few enterprising people who wanted to escape the heat would use the technology available and common for the era.
In this case, I suggest the popular method of heating a stone, a nice smooth one if you could find one, a chunk of coal if you couldn't in a cloth until it's cooled down so much that it no longer holds enough heat to be felt through the cloth. Then after it has cooled, you might remove it from the cloth. Given the quality of the clothing on the person, I suspect that it was likely that they might even have a nicely polished stone, maybe even a lava rock for the purpose. Based on modern prices, I suspect she might have paid the equivalent of $5 U.S. 2010 currency.
What's best is, next time she passed a stove, oven, etc... she might ask whoever was there to reheat her stone for her.
If you've ever enjoyed being out on a cold day, then you probably know that holding something nice and warm against your face can make the whole rest of your body feel warm for a little while.... well until you start freezing everywhere else that is
If you were an extra on a film set... and you knew you'd be out in the cold for some time. Wouldn't you like to be a little warmer?
Oh wait, he became well known only a few years later.... Well, maybe they are so bored in the future that they play something like russian time traveller roulette.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
well since they obviously had recording devices in that era... hence the motion picture, I know they also had sound recording instruments way(20-30 yrs.) before this film was made I am sure some company had a portable(think compaq) version of it for people on the go if you didn't mind lugging around a 15-30 pound device(explains the bulky clothes look) ans if you remember the older dictaphone handsets they were similar shape to a telephone handset...
FragHARD or don't frag at all
There is an app for that !
She is a delusional old lady who thinks she hears voices...
I found this history of hearing aids. http://deafness.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=deafness&cdn=health&tm=8&f=00&su=p736.9.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/did/ The device in her hand is quite possible the "Electric Camera"
--AD
How do we know we aren't that world that the crew of the Enterprise (or some other "real" ship) visits that happens to be identical to some earlier stage of "their" existence and evolution? How do we know that isn't actually an alien and not a time traveler at all?
Actually, let's say it's an early version of a tinfoil hat - lacking hat-ness, though it may contain tinfoil.
The extra had obviously heard that photographic film can steal one's soul. The object is a shield to protect the face against this threat.
In any case, no doubt someone else has noted that a cell phone wouldn't work in the 1920s. There are no towers to connect to the wired system. There's no one to speak to on this alleged "cell phone." Old Twilight Zone episodes notwithstanding, no one has reliably communicated with the past or future using radio waves.
Now I'm not sure exactly when hand held tape recorders started to come out but I do know that original recorders have been around since the 1800s, it could quite possibly be just that, a tape recorder. It would explain the position of her (or of what you think his) hand, and would even explain why they had it neir their mouth.
She seems to have the brim of her hat in hand. Occam's Razor would suggest 21st century conspiracy theorists as the mostly likely source of confusion.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Gees, as I've commented on other sites over the last few days concerning this.
1. Who was the old lady talking to? Well, plenty of people off screen for her to be talking to. She was probably blabbering to the old man in front of her even.
2. What does she have in her hand? Well, I can't see anything in her hand. The darkness might just be shadow. She might have had a tooth ache, she might have been holding her hand like that to hear the gentleman in front of her talking to her. There are so many different reasons why people hold their hand to their ear other than talking on a mobile phone.
3. She stops, turns and looks in shock at the camera. Well, someone off screen, possibly the cameraman, might have said something to her to cause her to stop and look his way. It's not exactly easy to see if she did look in shock because most of her head is in the shadow of her hat etc.
If you came from the future why would you walk around using a communications device openly anyway? That's the sort of thing to get you locked up in an asylum for 'hearing peoples voices coming out of a little box.'
Most plausible explanation I can think of is a certain film maker is trying to raise their profile by making a story out of nothing. He really should become a journalist.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Remember the stoner college time traveler from the 1941 South Fork Bridge reopening photo? These time traveling claims are not the childish misapplication of Occam's Razor everyone claims them to be. They are real, this is proof: http://www.mdl4.com/2010/10/time-travelers-caught-on-tape/ They're probably related.
It's an iPhone 5, duh. It's obvious -- Apple's been porting parts of OS X to iOS for a while now; did you think they wouldn't eventually port Time Machine?