Cell-phone using time traveler spotted in 1928 Charlie Chaplin movie

Joshua Glenn says:

Last fall, HiLobrow published a pre-mobile telephony image of a woman who appeared to be using a smartphone. You were kind enough to link to that post. I found a couple of other "Pluperfect PDAs" after that (I link to all of our discoveries in the post below) but since then I'd pretty much given up on this meme... until now. This Irish guy with the 1928 footage of the mobile phone user has just afforded the "Pluperfect PDA" meme a new lease on life...

Scott Lawrence suggests she's using an olde tyme hearing aid. I don't want to believe that because, well, I Want to Believe.

UPDATE: Xeni says: "THANK YOU FOR ALERTING US TO THE FACT THAT THIS MAY NOT REALLY BE A TIME TRAVELER USING A CELLPHONE." There is no need to continue to alert us in the comments.

time-traveler with cellphone

Time traveler caught in 1940 photo?

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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quitterjunior

I have always wondered if there was some layman’s proof (or disproof) of earth-human time travel that might actually hold water – some kinda techno-archeology. Forget Stark Trek communicators – many of OUR technologies leave a footprint. We can date dinosaur bones. We probably won’t ever be able to ‘date’ radio communications, for instance, but if we could – the existence of a humanly recognizable radio ‘message’ that predated radio would be harder to scoff at.

Non-want-to-belivers: let’s try to think in those terms – if there was a way to ‘date’ earlier techs, we could more convincingly disprove OUR potential for backwards time travel, without having to disprove time travel itself. Just disprove that HUMANS visited us from the future, and I think you will have effectively won this argument (speculating about aliens is like speculating about God). New tech doesn’t starve the herd – just because RADAR is NEWER than SONAR, it doesn’t mean that we have stopped using SONAR altogether. It should stand to reason that future humans would employ the same economies. That is to say: there is no reason to believe that our alleged future visitor – now matter how sophisticated they may be – should be ‘above’ employing technology CUMULATIVELY.

The benchmark-tech in question doesn’t need to be as primordial as radio for this to work either – nukes, for example, should leave a signature – on rocks, dinosaur bones, what have you. If we could establish a disparity (either by discovering a caveman that – according to radioactive dating – is only 1 year old, or by discovering a radius of site radioactivity, outside of which, dinosaur bones abruptly spike in age) we might be on to something.

These are just the first two examples that popped into my head. But very many of our technologies impact the environment in subtle (radio waves) and catastrophic (nuke) ways. The future is in many ways inconceivable, but come on, even Ripley used radio waves. It is not unthinkable that someone could affirmatively disprove the capacity for HUMANS from our instance of the universe to travel in time and have an effect on the past of humans from our instance of the universe (whether by impossibility or the future extinction of humans). But until you have personally accomplished this laudable task – STOP TROLLING. There is a difference between skepticism and pessimism. This is hella fun!
farmfoodie

Why a guy in drag? I mean, that’s a pretty impressive era-appropriate outfit, whether it’s a man or a woman. How’d the time traveler manage that, huh? Are there time traveler safe houses for arrival? Fully stocked with hats, coats, shoes, and clothing for all sizes? If so, how likely is it that said safe house is going to have women’s shoes that just happen to fit man feet? I mean, I’ll buy the whole mobile phone and stealth relay towers and all that. But a group with sufficient organization/motivation to kit a guy out in 1920s drag? Now that’s going a bit far, imho.
Sis B

Best. Update. Ever.
littlebrother

Its a small hand held ear trumpet.

http://www.phisick.com/images/ent/silver-ear-trumpet-small-102.jpg
redesigned

If they were really from the future they’d be in color! ;-P
- Mister44
  
  Calvin and Hobbes reference. Nice. High five!
Anonymous

Its my father. He is a big Charlie Chaplin fan and has been experimenting in time travel. I didn’t believe him at first. He told me he was going to do it and showed me the movie without the woman years ago. He told me he would appear in the scene once he gets his machine working.

Kudos on finding it. He has been trying to keep it secret. He called from the past on Feb 17, 2008. Apparently the time machine somehow provided a path for the mobile phone signals. Amazing. Just trying to figure out what to do with the capability.
MrJM

ZOMG!!1!

Everyone know that no one held their hand to the side of her head until the advent of cellular telephony! It’s a proven fact!!1!
- Mark Frauenfelder
  
  MrJM – We all know it isn’t a phone. But we are trying to figure out why she is holding her hand to her ear. You can either speculate on what it might be, refrain from commenting, or post something that’s amusing. Your post wasn’t any of these. It was useless post. Try harder next time.
  - Anonymous
    
    … your comment is as useless as mine. (Quantum Physically spoken).
    
    Cheers, MC
  - MrJM
    
    It was a joke regarding the inevitable comments “refuting” the post, Mr. F.
    
    Perhaps it was too recursive for your tastes. Or not funny.
    
    But either way, Mark, thanks for taking the time to comment.
    - Mark Frauenfelder
      
      Sorry, MrJM.
      - MrJM
        
        You’re a good man, Mark Frauenfelder.
        
        I’ll try to be funnier — but I can’t promise anything.
Anonymous

Blame it on Telsa for the transmitting towers, I guess… :) I cannot think of other person designing things like that. On other thoughts, it might be she was adressing somebody up ahead from her and had to speak out aloud, and because she is half deaf she had the custom to cover. Anyway, I find the idea of a cellphone exciting. Have to include this idea in the next movie of X-files… :))
Meatball Brown

Do you have any idea how expensive roaming rates are back to the 1920s? The signals for voice calls on the chrono-network are so spotty when you go back that far, and you can’t go back any further than 1954 if you want to activate the 25G chrono-data network. THAT’S how you know it’s a fake. She’s not furiously pounding her phone, yelling, “can you hear me now?!”
TheRealist

Mark,

VERY interesting video. Besides most of the ‘ridiculous’ answers of “it’s an iPhone, or etc..”, I think there is a possibility that the device he/she is holding could possibly be a primitive (to our standards) hearing aid. It does appear that he/she is holding some sort of device.

I think there may also be some merit to an above comment concerning the adjustment of an earing.

Additionally, added as a joke comment, but maybe getting someone who can actually read lips may at least assist in what this person might be saying. If we knew what he/she was saying, perhaps that may clarify things a bit. Speculation says perhaps she is speaking to the person in front of her, commenting on the fake zebra with a saddle, etc. There’s a wide array of possible variables that we do not know.

Not sure of the crossdresser portion though, as unfortunately it seems that she might be wearing what was in-style at the time, however masculine it may appear. Style was horrible in those times anyhow!

Have you tried taking some frames of this video and perhaps doing some reverse coloring or enhancement in Photoshop?

Have you perhaps tried to contact a Chaplin expert? (Not sure if those exist anymore.) Perhaps maybe someone who might be a historian of this film company, or of Chaplin’s works could also be an additional option. Oddly enough since this is so strange, you might also try to directly contact the film company, or whatever company may have bought out the filming company that Chaplin worked for. Chaplin was a bit of a prankster at times, so it really would not surprise me if we found out that there was way more to this story than we know!

Obviously, as you probably can tell, I do not assume that this is a time traveler. However, it does somewhat appear so if you take into account her body language compared to what you see daily in any decent sized city. I find this sort of oddity absolutely fascinating, and definitely presents more of a curiosity than the other ‘time traveler’ videos posted on BB.

Additionally, I think it would be very cool to discuss this with you in further detail. I’d also like to know your additional thoughts on this, or if you have uncovered any more detail about this video.
Anonymous

Probably, I mean realistically, she’s probably trying to hide her face. Not everyone want’s to be filmed.

Or maybe… she’s using her phone. To talk to another time traveller. On a network they specially brought with them for such instances. Or maybe it connects via a beacon on their ship. But then that would be spotted easily and is absurd. Instead, it work by magic.

Anyway, good to see some Nordies on Boingboing
nck wntrhltr

She’s giving dictation to her miniature Edison cylinder.
Coal

Clearly the only logical conclusion we can draw is that at some point in the future, there’s a 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), bought a carbon amplifier, 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!!
Anonymous

I’m not a time traveller, that was my regular time. I just havent been able to die yet.
delzey

how the hell did this non-story get so much traction? for days now people have been forwarding me links to the video going “have you seen this?”

can i blame the political season? people are just so inundated with stupidity that they are grasping at the most far-fetched diversion they can find to help them cope?
- freshacconci
  
  Because it’s a bit of fun? It’s also a bit of a mystery. Not that “is it a cellphone?” is much of a mystery but rather that it looks like she could be talking on a cellphone, which is impossible, so what is it.
  
  That’s all. Maybe you should perhaps lighten up?
AvengingRocker

Could be this
http://hearing.siemens.com/ca/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?year=1924
hughelectronic

Finally! We finally have evidence that time travel is possible! Of course, it comes in the form of blurry footage in the DVD extras of an obscure comedy, and there are hundreds of alternative explanations that are more likely than time travel. But still, seeing is believing â€” and I want to believe!
BDiamond

Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance, stop. Move in, stop. Pull out, track right, stop. Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there.

Migawd, it’s a pack of Five Gum! What an amazing use of time travel technology for ingenious product placement!
- Hagrid
  
  I really wish BB had a “like” function, similar to facebook.
  That way, I wouldn’t have to log in and type “Blade Runner reference FTW!”
Anonymous

its 1928 – she’s obviously calling her broker ordering a sell
Drhaggis

It’s been a dream of mine to go back in time and set up a wifi network for other time travelers.
obeyken

I imagine some cell phone towers would have to get sent back in time as well, right?
- Anonymous
  
  yes. they were disguised as trees
- Anonymous
  
  No – perhaps this person is from OUR future – Perhaps this person is not even born yet!!!I know it is hard to imagine but in the future,our future, we may not need cell towers or anything that would have to be taken back with us.. it is a thought..we do not know what our future holds..we can imagine our technology & what may happen but new things are being developed every day…and many things already are that we are not informed of as of yet….so open your mind a bit… as I said this person may be from our future and noone knows what our future holds.
- Anonymous
  
  the traveler’s from later on in the future when we don’t need cell phone towers
Anonymous

So did anybody ask the guy if he thought it was on a CDMA tower or a GSM?
Anonymous

This is a crazy person.
A crazy person talking to her own hand.
A crazy person near the corner of hollywood and vine
not unlike the crazy people you see at the same intersection today
voiceinthedistance

Duh . . . she’s conversing with a brick. Cellphones in the “brick” form factor were styled after this early practice.
Anonymous

“Can you hear me now?”
“Good”
deckard68

Shielding her face from the harsh sunlight or camera lighting, perhaps.
KPS666

It’s funny that her behavior automatically suggests to people that it was a cell phone. Why couldn’t it be some other sort of communications device like a communicator from Star Trek or some kind of trans-temporal radio? If we are going to suggest such wildly far out things as time travel in the first place, who thinks that a culture with such advanced technology is still using cell phones?
mack

The clip shows someone holding a possibly squared object(or maybe just a hairbrush) to her face. Nothing more.

Fun’s fun and all, but seriously – this meme has far outlived the 15 seconds it should have been denied in the first place.

Very clever viral marketing for the filmmaking company that made the video. Kudos to millions of aiders and abetters.
- Anonymous
  
  So, if you have so advance technology like pdas, and pcs why are you doing using a so old fashioned pencil or pen?
Dave Faris

How about this, Mark?
- Anonymous
  
  BRILLIANT!
dainel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jivNz_i9QTU

I don’t know why, but many of them put their hands to their ears like this. Some use only one hand. Some use both hands to both sides of the face. My mom says it looks like they have a very bad tooth ache
UncaScrooge

Rookie mistake. When I time travel, I always contact the ship with a bluetooth device. The civilians generally mistake me for a Hysteric and edge away, further concealing my communiques.
ordnael

There would be no network.
I think she was trying to listen the ocean and it might be an ordinary conch.
;)
James

A quick google search (I mean literally my first search) turned up this: http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/did/images1/VC703163p_large.jpg

This aid, manufactured by the French Electric Co., around 1930, is housed in an interesting camera-style case. This is an unusual example of an electrical concealed hearing device.

The page (http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/did/20thcent/index.htm) also has a quote from a Dr. in 1933

â€œIn America the users of hearing devices seem to be more inclined to accept the electrically amplified instruments. It is also noticeable that comparatively few use any form of camouflaged trumpets . . . â€

â€” Max A. Goldstein, M.D., 1933

A hearing device and lunacy seems far more plausible.
- Anonymous
  
  She(he?) doesnÂ´t a hearing aid cause itÂ´s a silent movie and the `Zebra` looks more like a sort of Tiger-horse
Gilbert Wham

But, but, taken that there’s no cellular network for her putative iPhone back then, it raises the question; THEN WHO WAS PHONE!?
Anonymous

best comment thread ever. i laughed until my fingers were palsied. thanks BBers!
Anonymous

He wants to believe: http://hearing.siemens.com/en/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?page=3&year=1924
Kulia

She’s clearly on an iPhone because way back then, AT&T actually had great coverage.
- James
  
  Haha, I was going to say she’s obviously not on an iPhone because the way she’s holding it would have definitely dropped the call.
- Anonymous
  
  i think you meant omnipoint, lol!
Motion select

It’s the Verizon guy saying “can you hear me now?” for the new Verizon commercial.

“Coverage now available in 1928.”
Anonymous

Doesn’t look anything like a cell phone (of any vintage) to me. Looks more like a bag of ice against the side of the face … just like I did once when I had an impacted wisdom tooth. For my money, she’s just got a toothache and is trying to numb the pain with ice.
adent1066

Maybe that’s the communicator McCoy left behind.
Anonymous

I totally support the hearing aid theory, but i think is even more believable that she’s is hearing her own voice for the first time in a long time.
Church

The weird thing is that she’s talking. To whom?
- Anonymous
  
  She was talking to me, John Titor.
- Anonymous
  
  She was talking to me, I am so sorry for all this, I was very late, little confused (man, driving those old cars is a hassle! And google maps app wasn’t installed on my device )… All this is my fault, sorry folks. But the premiere was great! ;)
RedShirt77

I came back in time just to make that terminator reference an no one noticed. oh well gigawatts practically grow on trees in the future. Good luck waiting for iphone 12 suckas!
Ugly Canuck

Personally, I feel that I’ve gone back in time every time I watch an old movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0QkJNqYpFM

Film itself is the time machine.
garykemble

She *was* so a time traveler, and she was talking to her husband, trying to figure out what the kids wanted from 1928. But then that damned saddled zebra caused the signal to drop out so… http://www.zazzle.com/charlie_chaplin_time_traveller_relative_t_shirt-235392693101637777

#merchalert
Anonymous

Time travel is impossible. At least the way it’s portrayed in science fiction etc. However, time dilation is a real phenomenon. You can experience time more slowly than others if you move fast enough.

To think that the events of the past do not instantly decay or that the future has already happened is certainly false. Everything happened(s) in an instant, we’re simply experiencing it in our own extruded way.

You’re now all doctorates in cosmology. Your welcome!

Oh and she’s not holding a cell phone, it’s clearly a digital audio recorder..
Anonymous

A time traveler with a cell phone in hand isn’t much of a story. A time traveler coming back to 1928 and finding working cellular infrastructure, now that is interesting.
Anonymous

A cell phone without a cell network? No! Obviously she’s with starfleet having pass through the guardian of time. No doubt she’s in touch with Science Officer Spok, who is telling her “Edith Keeler must die!”.
Anonymous

old people can be pretty crotchety when it comes to noise – i would guess she’s annoyed and disturbed by that dang infernal commotion going on all around her & simply holding her hand up to shield her ear – maybe holding a coin purse – and talking to that guy walking ahead of her – who looks like her hen-pecked husband – telling him she “can’t even think with all this racket…used to be a nice place…there ought to be a law…blah blah blah”

or she’s an alien – either one
Anonymous

Patternicity: Finding Meaningful Patterns in Meaningless Noise…. Why the brain believes something is real when it is not.

google for the article in scientific american….
Anonymous

..yeah whatever, but its a ZEBRA WITH A SADDLE ON IT !!
Shelby Davis

My favourite line:
“It’s not an ear trumpet, it’s not an AM/FM radio, because, /obviously/, it’s 1928…”

Of course.
Nice way to let us know it’s all in fun.
Anonymous

This is obviously a Klingon stationed on a bird of prey that followed the Enterprise back in time. That is a Klingon communicator in his/her hand….no doubt discussing the exact coordinates to beam out as quickly as possible after being caught on film.
Jesse M.

Personally I don’t see any object in her hand, couldn’t people just be reading too much into the shadow of her hand? Maybe someone can do an enlarged freeze-frame that shows she is holding something, but otherwise she may just be covering her face because she doesn’t want to be filmed.
- sgnp
  
  It’s odd that she’s holding her hand in such a strange, gnarled position if she’s trying to hide her face, but I got that “shadow” impression as well.
  
  For me, however, it’s not so much the position of her hand as the combination of that and how she *stops* while walking and is still talking.
  
  I think what strikes a lot of people about it is that it’s a kind of “how-people-use-a-cell-phone” body language, whether or not there’s something in her hand.
  - Jesse M.
    
    It’s odd that she’s holding her hand in such a strange, gnarled position
    
    Yeah, but back in the 1920s didn’t everyone over 40 have horrible arthritis, rheumatism etc.? (kidding obviously, but could be true in her case)
    - Anonymous
      
      We should definitely, collectively sue Apple for the iPhone 5 causing Arthritis!
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      Are you suggesting that she was trying to hide a “claw hand” without putting it into her pocket?
      - Jesse M.
        
        Are you suggesting that she was trying to hide a “claw hand” without putting it into her pocket?
        
        No, like I said before my theory would be she was just trying to cover her face so as not to appear on film, the arthritis idea was just a speculation to explain why it kind of looked like she was clutching something, but it’s not even really necessary to explain that part…maybe she was just curling her fingers a bit because the brim of her hat would block them if she stretched them out, or because back in olden times when she grew up it would have been unladylike to cover your face with more hand than just your fingertips, or because she had sticky hands from some 1920s gunk she’d been eating, etc. etc.
    - sgnp
      
      The arthritis thing was the first thing I was thinking of as soon as I said that. Good show!
- Anonymous
  
  look at the close-up at the end of the film to see the sun upon the item in question.. look behind the ear area – you will see it.
AnnaZed

James, I would call your response more amazing than the video. That is kind of a weird cool object you found there, and probably right too. What search terms did you use? Amazing that this guy would go to all of this trouble zooming, renting a screening space, making a video etc. and that he didn’t just you know – Google it. funny!
Anonymous

I think she might be holding some sort of novelty, like a commercial seashell. Maybe a trinket that proclaims to let you hear the ocean or something. She’s probably talking to someone else nearby or just muttering to herself “I thought I was supposed to hear the ocean! I don’t hear anything!”
Andy Rofl

It’s obviously a hand-held CB transceiver, not a mobile phone, because there are no mobile phone towers in 1928. She’s obviously talking to her friends back in the time machine with the CB.
Lucifer

If she is a time traveler, this event has split the universe and created at least one new alternate universe. By that I mean that the time traveler must know that she was caught on camera since this incident has been documented in October 2010 and we can presume time travel started happening in the future. So if the time traveler knew they would be caught on camera and documented, it would probably alter their actions as to not get caught. This alteration splits the universe into another parallel universe.
- Anonymous
  
  … do you think the future inherits all the knowledge from the past? Do you think Boigboing will be archived FOR EVER?
  
  It’s logic the creature uses a Quantum Phone: no need for mobile antennas!
  
  (And btw: the being is an androgyne Spaghettimonster)
- sgnp
  
  Several counters to that idea:
  
  1) Maybe time travel is already happening and no one let you in on it because those in the know don’t think you’re “one of them” enough to handle it.
  
  2) Let’s say they are from our future. Maybe this footage never gets past the “oh, hey, that’s funny!” stage. Our intrepid time traveler goes back and doesn’t know about it because it’s in no way famous.
  
  3) Maybe they are from our future and the clip is famous among time travelers. Perhaps a time traveler went back to *stop* the person who appears in this video. They can’t find them. It’s a one-time only trip, and they’re running out of time! They return, but realize they left their communication device behind. Its presence could alter reality as we know it. They take a chance. They call it. Someone picks it up. “Hello?” says the hesitant voice. “I don’t have time to explain, but can you please take this device and destroy it?” “Okay…where…where should I take it?” “Well, madame, is there an industrial furnace where you are?” “I don’t know…I see a zebra…”
- Anonymous
  
  Indeed, the time traveller could have–upon realizing (s)he’d been made–gone back to invent the Siemens device linked above as a cover.
arp

anyone else think he/she/it bears a resemblance to Tom Baker of Doctor Who?
richthespoof

Surely suggesting that the person is simply holding their hand to the side of their head is to propose an explanation. I don’t see anything in her hand, I think MrJM suggestion is perfectly reasonable. I feel it was more to the point than your reply.
spleen

ohhhh…. myearscold myearscold myearscold myearscold….
all together now.
Anonymous

It’s probably the iPhone 5. Jealous.
9re9

The only sense I can make of this is they sent her back to kill Der FÃ¼hrer but aimed the machine at The Tramp by mistake.
dculberson

“I told you, I’m already at the zebra with a saddle on it. Where the heck are you??”
abstract_reg

So assume that is a cell phone that she is using. How did she get it to work? As has been joked about before, there is no cell phone coverage in 1928, and if it’s a satellite phone it still wouldn’t work as the only satellite in orbit at this time is the Moon. The other thing is for her to be talking into it implies the existence of at least one other time-traveller for her to be talking to.
I think we are not looking at a time-traveller but an alien in disguise, calling to the mother-ship is orbit around the Earth.
Anonymous

OMG a zebra with a saddle on it’s back. how is that even possible?
Anonymous

For her to be talking on a cell phone would not be technologically possible at the time since micro-components did not even exist in 1928 nor was the frequency coverage for cell bands either in the 900MHz or ultrahigh freqs allocated and available. Anyone who knows anything about cell phones, towers, etc., will know that this is not possible for the period of 1928. Portable radio devices such as AM pocket radios did not exist either but the technology to make a foxhole radio, based on this at http://bizarrelabs.com/foxhole.htm was entirely possible as a handheld device.
Anonymous

It is a pretty interesting video whether it’s a time traveler or not. But there were certainly people who talked to themselves back than, aka “crazy people” foil hats and all of that. But that makes me wonder if crazy people pick up on differing behaviors of sane people. The idea is that a person who talks to them self back then would do it in a different way than today, because the things, and the behaviors they cause, in our lives today are somewhat different than back then.
Anonymous

She just came from the dentist. She’s holding an ice pack to the side of her face. And she’s saying, to no one in particular, “Christ, what an asshole.”
Anonymous

She’s a humanoid alien undercover visiting Earth, caught on a camera calling the mothership. She’s not a time traveller at all!
bolamig

Indeed, there’s no way that’s a cell phone. It’s clearly a Sat Phone.
efergus3

The Ceti Alpha V parasite is moving around again.
tw15

There used to be, in the 1980s, a man who stood outside Woolworth’s on the Ilford High Road and talked into a kazoo. He used to describe the people walking buy. I used to think he had a screw loose, but the footage above is making me wonder, was he another time traveller ? ;-)
Anonymous

It looks like it was a sunny day. She was probably holding a small change purse and shielding her face from the sun.
Anonymous

We have tours. They’re very expensive, and very risky so there is a screening process, much like the ones you have there for handguns only a lot more intensive.
When the seven corporations (as they came to be known) started managing information for Northern Government, everyone’s entire history has been logged and can be baktrased pretty thoroughly throughout their entire lives. So the screening process is an accurate one.
I digress.
The Trans is holding the Uny2 and was from one of these tours. It happened several years ago.
I really shouldn’t be telling you this.
barracuda

Okay, I just wanna alert everybody to the fact that this may not really be a time traveler using a celphone.

At about 5:06 she pulls her long boney finger out from under her hat where she’s been scratching a nit. And yeah, she’s talking to herself alright. You would too if there was a nit under your hat. End of alert. Threat level returns to “yellow”.
Actionverb

Crazy lady with a cricket in a matchbox. Mystery explained.
- WaylonWillie
  
  I’m glad I slogged through to Actionverb’s comment. We can all stop now.
CuttingOgres

A hearing aid maybe. But who is she talking to? The gentleman ahead of her?
- sgnp
  
  Exactly. They’ve been married for a very very long time, and he tries to stay as far away from her as possible because of her habit of talking to him incessantly, regardless of whether he looks at her, listens to her, or continues walking while she stands still.
W. James Au

“Can you hear me now? Tachyon reception is FUCKED. OK, can you give me my position, because this sure as shit doesn’t look like Berlin. I’m where? In… Hollywood? WAIT YOU MEAN I’M IN THE STATES? How the FUCK do you expect me to take out Hitler from here?”
Anonymous

There wouldn’t have been a way for her to use a cellphone and actually be using it because they didn’t even have satellite back then… How would she even have a signal????????
- Anonymous
  
  Fact: The Eifel Tower is and has always been a cell tower.
  Fact!
ultranoia

So that’s where the white iPhone 4 went.
exile

That’s really disappointing. Somewhere between now and the future we’re going to lose hands-free capability.
AdrianJMartin

Its the Witch of the Waste:

http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=witch+of+the+waste&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1780&bih=956

So she’ll be using magic…
Anonymous

who would she be talking to?
Anonymous

It appears that the woman is holding a hearing aid as described above to her ear. As far as the woman speaking…she knows she is being filmed hence looking at the camera. Flattered of being filmed, she mutters something to herself like “Oh my gosh, I’m being filmed, I’m going to be famous 82 years later when someone thinks I’m using a cellphone!”.
OrcOnTheEndOfMyFork

Back and to the left…
Back and to the left…
Back and to the left…
ill lich

It’s called pareidolia, and it’s been addressed here on boingboing before– it’s your eyes playing tricks on you. She is not holding a “flat black device” and talking into it. I suspect she is scratching her head and talking to someone else off screen (perhaps the man she was following is with her.)

The alternate explanation is that she’s Captain Kirk in drag talking to Scotty, but even Kirk knew enough not to draw attention to himself on a crowded street by talking into a mysterious device in front of the primitives.
Hoocareswhadithink

If it isn’t a cell phone, why would she be walking along by herself talking into a ‘hearing aid’ or some other suggested device? Case closed!
hungryjoe

I’m pretty confident I would have detected another time traveler that day.

Then again, it’s getting so that you can’t attend ANY movie premier without half the audience being fellow chrono-tourists.

You can always spot us. We can’t wear cuff-links.
- sgnp
  
  Hey, I’ve got a bone to pick with you guys.
  
  I went to Dallas in 1995 and the security for the Sixth Floor Museum was worse than the airport. Not *all* of us are there to hop back and actually *be* at the JFK assassination.
  
  This kind of stuff ruins things for the rest of us.
- echoECHO
  
  try an anti-static bag. sounds stupid, i know, but works every time.
  - hungryjoe
    
    If that works, I’ll be shocked. Get it? Shocked?
    
    This is what passes for humor in the future.
d.worff

BTW I bothered to see the movie tonight and there is no such scene in there at all. If you see the movie you would understand that charlie would never have use for a scene like this. Moreover I think that Mark Frauenfelder wants to prove he can cause a world-wide stirr using the laziness and goodbelief of the audience. So there is no proof whatsoever that this footage is from 1928. Well done by the way Mark!

SMILE EVERYONE YOUR ON CANDID CAMERA!
- sapere_aude
  
  I saw this a day or two ago on another site; and they specifically mentioned there that this was NOT a scene from the actual movie, but was included in bonus footage on the DVD. Apparently, it’s from footage shot outside the theatre at the premiere of the movie.
  
  @Xeni: I laughed out loud when I read your “Update”. Thanks for the chuckle. :-)
  - d.worff
    
    But then it still cannot be proven it is from 1928. But if it is, IÂ´ll say it is Oliver Hardy going to the premiere in disguise to check out his competition talking into a wired empty tin to Stan Laurel who is getting him into another fine mess on the corner of the street. (if you look carefully you see a wire tracing Hardy)
benher

Without seeing the rest of the scene in context maybe we’re missing something, but I’m going to hazard the guess that it’s simply random thespian gesturing, like “Hey, I’m old and my teeth hurt and I’m ranting as I stumble across the set!”

Also, if it was a silent movie maybe everyone feels like they have to pretend to talk (or were coached by the director to do so?) Just guessing.
- d.worff
  
  Yeah a silent movie, so she doesnot need a hearing aid at all!
Anonymous

Definitely an early prototype of a wireless tin can phone being tested of campus. Quick take it apart and blog it :)
RedShirt77

She is probably tapping into the local era phone system so she can call all the Audrey Connors(Sarah Connors’ grandmother) in the local listings.

It’s hard to make a machine that walks like a lady.
hungryjoe

Worked like a charm! Thanks!
Anonymous

All i can say is that if i was able to time travel, I’d go back to be in a Charlie Chaplin movie and i’d do something like this. The people then wouldn’t know anything strange was going on.
Anonymous

My deaf GF read his/her lips, quote “OMG I’m on the set of a Charlie Chaplin movie, tell my nan.”
Anonymous

Why would someone who has access to a time travel technology be using a handheld telephone? Surely, they would use a device small enough to be hidden in the ear or elsewhere.
holtt

There needs to be an app for time travelers – like FourSquare or Twitter with optional user-set time tag. TimeTweet, FourthDimensionSquare. “I am at the Alamo, in 1836. Met Bowey. Christ, what an asshole.”
Hagrid

OK, Occam’s Razor would suggest that this is *not* a time traveler, if there is a simpler explanation available, and there is one: she’s talking to herself.

It’s not an unreasonable explanation, sane people talk to themselves all the time. I know I do (especially when I think no one is looking)! And we’ve all seen mentally ill people who walk around talking to themselves.

It’s also possible that she’s not actually talking — perhaps she is singing to herself? She could be chewing gum or tobacco (though I find these two doubtful, given her attire and social attitudes at the time).

Can we rule out some kind of dysfunction, such as Tourette syndrome, Geniospasm, or other involuntary movement disorder of the lips and chin? Dystonia is known to cause involuntary lip smacking. If any of these is the case, she could be someone who covers her face in public.

So, if we can what explain the behaviour that appears to be talking, what of the hand to the face, and possible object in her hand?

I can think of several possible explanations for the hand position: headache, toothache, earache, covering the face (as mentioned above), scratching an itch, holding an ice pack to her face (maybe she just came from the dentist?), hiding a bad blemish or zit, blocking the sun, trying not to be noticed or filmed by the camera or someone else… there’s a LOT of possibilities.

Dave Faris up in comment #14 also provides a possible hearing aid answer, in the hand-held hearing aid that was patented by Siemens in 1924 ( http://hearing.siemens.com/en/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?page=3&year=1924 ). Maybe she likes listening to her own voice through the thing? (Incidentally, are the plans/patent for this device available online?) The device would likely still have been very cutting-edge and expensive a mere 4 years after the patent, but this lady looks well-dressed enough to be able to afford a high-tech device.

I do not see convincing proof that the person actually sees the camera. Eyes are not visible in the shade under the hat brim.

I do not see any convincing proof that this is a man in drag. She looks like a well-off, matronly woman of a certain age.

All of that having been said, you muggles all are waaaaay off in looking for a SF answer to this mystery. The truth is, this is a witch, visiting from the The Salem Witches’ Institute, or perhaps even Hogwarts. Just look at that outfit, and those shoes — she’s a witch. And she’s speaking on a magical device that is the wizarding corollary of a cell phone.

Hey, it’s every bit as possible and reasonable as the time-traveller explanation, right?
- Anonymous
  
  we need Sherlock Holmes to solve this.
Anonymous

igotit. I GOT IT !

shes not really talking, shes mumbling and FIXING HER EARRING !
look carefully at the last seconds when she stops and how her fingers move.
YES !
shadowfirebird

Well, from my POV she’s holding something to her head. And talking. She’s been holding something to her head for a while, because her hand isn’t moving.

But of course there is nothing to say that body language can’t have changed since then. Maybe I’m/we’re misreading the queues.

Can anyone here lipread? That might help us sort out what’s going on.
fataltourist

HEY GUYS I DID SOME CALCULATIONS AND IT LOOKS LIKE THAT IS NOT A TIME TRAVELER USING A CELL PHONE. I AM FEDEXING MY LAB RESULTS. THANKS. BYE
sam1148

She’s muttering under her breath “Damn those carbon arc-lights are bright” while shielding her eyes.

She’s holding a block of ice in a rag on the way to the dentist to get a tooth pulled.
MarkM

Noone else mentioned: maybe she had toothache or some ailment on the lower jaw or ear? That would be a good reason for holding your jaw: it’s in pain.

The video may be a viral ad. I hope that he’s kidding. But he or someone like him, given the same footage, could EASILY be serious.

The same pattern of ignorance and/or inept reasoning has led tens of thousands of people to be 9-11 Truthers or believers that crop circles have extraterrestrial origin.

And it scares me. It’s the same type of (un)reasoning that allows one person to victimize another because the latter “caused” a plague or lightning or crops to fail.
Anonymous

Oh man, this is solid evidence to back up modern socio-anthropological theory. Hollywood is full of halfwits, Irish filmakers are halfwits, too. People who make films are mostly halfwits. I’m laughing my arse off watching this guy talk, it’s obvious that he’s conditioned to be surrounded by sycophants telling him how deep and wonderful his art is. Nobody has ever told the emperor that he has no clothes, errrr, or brains.
Anonymous

By the way that it’s held, it’s not an iPhone4…
Elmo Gearloose

No, by the period time travel became viable in 2067 cellphones were replaced by cranial nano-implants and — er, I think I said too much. Just ignore this message.
Anonymous

She might look “butch” because of the zoom ratio on his television. I don’t understand how people don’t notice the fun-house mirror effect on their televisions when they haven’t properly adjusted them.
Anonymous

If she’s from the “future”, she’s only from our very-near future, until THE GREAT AWAKENING when people realized that they are, in fact, damaging their brain tissue by holding a small microwave device NEXT TO THEIR BRAINS.
(My bad, it’s only dangerous if your brain starts cooking. Proceed as normal.)

(She’s obviously muttering to herself, only she’s going deaf, so she’s using an old fashioned hearing cone thingamajig.)
CammoBlammo

I think the big story here is that the guy thinks we want to listen to him prattle on for so long. The video’s 8:27 long. He played the video through a few times at different zooms and speeds which is fair enough. He explained how he found the footage and where we could get our own.

I just don’t understand what the other 6 minutes of the video was for.
- freshacconci
  
  He’s Irish.
kevinsky

It’s a Bananaphone, duh. An invisible bananaphone.

Look away, look back. Now it’s a BananaGUN!
Anonymous

To all who surmised it to be a hearing aid: if it were one, why would the person talk into it? To be heard by himself/herself? Nobody was close by to answer a query he/she might have had!!

My guess is, it could well be a reporter sporting a compact (yet primitive) recorder used to voice record live details of the happenings!!! I could be wrong, but I guess this might be a safe guess than Time travel and Cell Phone. Cos if it were Time travel and cell phone, obviously coverage is a question. we dont have a clear answer for that, logically not possibly.
Nyrb

It’s an old lady holding her hand up to her face

Occam’s razor people
Anonymous

If time travel becomes possible in the future we should soon start finding more evidence of it in old footage.
It won’t be long now before previously unseen footage of Chaplin’s lost film ‘Time Travelers in Drag’ is discovered.
She certainly doesn’t need a cellular network to connect, the ‘push-to-talk’ feature on the iphone17 and the uphone9 is all that’s needed to reconnect her with her tour group after becoming lost.
Dave Faris

Is it possible that she’s with the guy in the cowboy hat and not really talking to herself?
Anonymous

It’s very high contrast film, midday harsh lighting. It looks to me like she’s tucking her hair in under her hat. Perhaps if she’d noticed the camera while she was still off-screen (cameras were pretty noticeable and not exactly uncommon in Hollywood in 1928), and she wants to at least be presentable onscreen, thus going through the time honored and somewhat unconscious feminine ritual of tucking one’s hair back in under one’s hat. Whilst muttering about stupid cameras and stupid Hollywood and whatever else she’s up against as she was plodding through her day. Or maybe her hair was just getting mussed up. Stupid hair. This is the mundane reality of our lives, past, present and future: It all comes down to (1)hair-dos and (2)tidying up things that are just going to get messy again.

Ultimately, it’s all kind of a tired advert for a grade Z-movie. This guy seems to be a low-rent version of Zach Tovey in “The Teeth Beneath”.
Mister44

http://hearing.siemens.com/sg/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?year=1924

Yes – using a cell phone with a non-existent cell network. 0_0

Beside – we all know time travelers look like this:
http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content09/dr-who-sonic-screwdriver.jpg

And this:
http://cobolhack…er.com/images/content/torchwood/jack_harkness.jpg

Kudos for the guy getting himself that 15 min. More than I’ll ever have.
Anonymous

Yep, a time traveller. That’s the most likely thing right? A time traveller, smart enough to disguise themselves in period dress but curiously still thinks nothing of walking around in public using a mobile phone from the year 2010.

Definitely a time traveller.
Anonymous

me and my wife believes that is very possible for time traveler from our future, we choose not to believe it because we are not capable of that technology intelligent YET. imagine 100 or even 200 years from now, everything that is not possible right now, it doesnt mean is impossible in the future…SO YES>>time traveler ABSOlutely,,,if that person ever find out that YOU got that footage.,,make sure u make a shout out,,to that time traveler to communicate with u,,…LIke
“hey time travelers,,its cool to see you there,,please if u see this email me,,,i wont tell anyone,,but u have to bring me over to ur time”