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BY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Time travelers? Cell phones in 1928? Or simply a great marketing hoax for a Charlie Chaplin movie? Chaplin may have been further ahead of his time than we thought.
The story first surfaced in a YouTube video that includes film footage showing the 1928 premiere of the Charlie Chaplin film "The Circus" at Manns Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. Irish filmmaker George Clarke points out a woman in the old footage holding what he describes as a cell phone against her ear. The shape implies the woman is a time traveler using a modern mobile device rather than an ear trumpet, Clarke said.
19th-century resonator hearing aids such as ear trumpets were still made in large numbers well into the first decades of the 20th century, Philip Skroska, an archivist at the Bernard Becker Medical Library of Washington University in St. Louis explained to the Christian Science Monitor, and the basic designs didn't change much aside from incorporating newer, plastic-like materials.
"Besides, I would expect this woman to be over 50 years old, so using a late 19th century design in 1928 would not be a stretch I think," Skroska said.
Electronic hearing aids also existed before World War II, but in fewer numbers.
"Now, I can't really explain why the woman appears to be talking (other than yelling at the man who quickened his pace ahead of her)," Skroska said in an e-mail.
According to Clarke, the footage of the walking, apparently talking woman was found in the special-features section on a DVD release of Chaplin's The Circus. E Online reports one YouTuber suggested the shot could be the result of a post-production worker having some fun.
Time travel expert, physicist Dr. Michio Kaku discussed the possibility of time travel with Time magazine, saying, "There is a loophole in Einstein's equation that even Einstein realized was there. In Einstein's equation, time is a river. It speeds up, meanders, and slows down. The new wrinkle, is that it can have whirlpools and fork into two rivers. So, if the river of time can be bent into a pretzel, create whirlpools and fork into two rivers, then time travel cannot be ruled out."
Clarke claims the footage has not been tampered with in any way and seems convinced this is evidence of time travel.
Telegraph.co.uk says other explanations range from the woman holding a block of ice to take away the pain of a dental appointment, to the clip itself being a fake — detractors point out that fade transitions had not been developed in the 1920s.
No word back yet from Warner Home Video as to whether the footage, as presented in the YouTube clip, appears undoctored.
We don't have the answers. But in a related story, it's the 25th anniversary of "Back to the Future" this week.
ladies used to carry a hand kerchief in the older days whenever they go out in their hands and even she is doing the same and was talking to her husband ahead.
Plus, two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, including a time travelling person and the air in the space that he appears. Also, the earth is constantly moving very very fast, by the time time travel would be invented, we will be light years away from where the earth was in the 1920s, to travel back to earth by hundreds of years would also require a way of moving light years from your current position.
He is also a person in the film, not just a stranger, which means that whatever he was holding has been passed around by other people from that time, so why did people not hear about this back then?
It's not a time traveller, I think he's talking with someone around him, and holding some padding on his ear, cause it's cold?
If it was a hard-wired phone, I might see the sense of sending a voicemail forwars through time (a la 12 Monkeys) but a cellphone wouldn't even work.
Besides...would a time traveller be walking down the crowded street talking on a futuristic cell phone anyway? Wouldn't that cause a bit of a stir? Why wouldn't the guy in front of her stop and wonder what she was up to?
Come on, everybody. This is nuts. A cell phone wouldnt WORK in the 1920s.
I go for time traveler.
What do lip readers say she says?
It is a woman, women had really big
well worked hands back then. Not 2010
sissy hands.