George Clarke has found some footage from the premiere of a 1928 Charlie Chaplin film that he can only explain as a time-traveler talking on a mobile phone.
I think there must be some other explanation, but can’t think of anything more rational. What say you?
1- God dammit Dave, wait for me, my hat’s comin’ off.
2 - Awk, laws a mighty, the toolie booltoo is walmaky yumchuk.
3 - The reception really sucks here, I can’t hear you. I’ll call you back after the invent cell phone towers and an infrastructure.
Maybe I’m blind (entirely possible), but I can’t see her holding anything. Maybe I’d be more impressed if I could actually see the picture in higher resolution. She has an earache? Her hat (or wig) is coming off in the wind? It’s cold out and her ears are starting to hurt? She’s cupping her hand to her ear because she can’t hear the dude in front of her (I’ll grant that the position of her hand makes that one seem to be one of the more unlikely possibilities, but not impossible)?
Transistor radios were developed in the mid-50s, and became popular in the 60s. There’s a scene in Endless Summer in which on of the protagonists was holding a transistor radio as they drive through the veldt, and they obviously felt that they were beyond ultra-cool.
How is a time traveler supposed to get reception in 1928? What time traveler would be dumb enough to whip out their Nokia in a crowd? In fairness, though, I do like to scan old pictures and films for things that look like anachronisms. And it does look like she’s holding a phone to her ear. Except there’s nothing in her hand.
No. Small transistor radios first came along in the mid-1950s. The very smallest portable tube-based radios were about the size of large lunchboxes, operating on huge A and B cell batteries.
Even walkie-talkies were quite large until the late 1970s, when integrated circuits gradually began to replace discrete components.
Wait, the most rational explanation you can imagine for someone in 1928 to be holding their hand up to their ear is that they’re a time-traveling cell phone user?
Yes, it’s not impossible that a woman in the 1920s was:
(1) Holding on to her hat;
(2) Scratching her ear;
(3) Cupping her hand to her ear to hear something;
(4) Adjusting her hair; etc., etc.
To my eyes she’s not holding anything. As she turns it looks to me like you can see some light coming from between her fingers, which would be blocked if she were holding a phone. But the film is so grainy it’s hard to tell.
As an aside, I loved his logic that it was impossible to have been a transistor radio as early as 1928 so it must have been a mobile phone.
It does seem sort of breezy, if you look at the trees and flags, which explains why she is covering the phone so well. Otherwise the wind would blow across the mouthpiece and the other person would barely be able to hear her.
This guy is so stupid. How the hell is a time traveler in the past going to use a cell phone? No towers, no other phones, no infrastructure, etc. Pffft… idiot. She’s, obviously using a sub-space communicator.
“Captain, this is na’e workin’ out. I doon look like a woman”
“Now, Scotty, you’re always saying you want to go on missions to the planet surface, and I’m not allowed to interfere with time since I almost saved Edith Keeler. So put away the communicator and go make sure Charlie Chaplin makes his film - history hangs in the balance!”
(Chekov & Sulu are heard snickering in the background)
My guess would be that she’s shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. Look at the shadow she’s casting, it’s clearly a very bright and sunlit day and the sun is low on the horizon (her shadow is quite long).
The only odd thing would be that her fingers seem rather more curled (as if they were holding something) instead of what you might expect as the more normal action of extending one’s fingers more fully when doing a sun-shielding action. But if you mime it yourself - and imagine a sun or other light source pointed directly at your left ear - you’ll see that if you hold your hand straight up, you don’t shield as much of your eyes as if you curl your fingers slightly to provide more lateral coverage. The only way to get more coverage would be to stick your elbow out awkwardly and hold your hand with the thumb pointing upwards instead of to the side.
Playing devil’s advocate – if it IS a time-traveler, maybe she’s talking on one of those Nextel two-way devices to another time-traveler. A two-way radio would still work without cell phone towers, wouldn’t it? I know after Hurricane Katrina, a lot of people found that their Nextels were the only things that worked.