We covered lots of serious stuff today so here’s some silliness for you guys. Here’s the question being asked all over the interwebs. Did a Woman Travel Through Time to Attend a Charlie Chaplin Premier? Seriously.
Some pretty normally sane movie sites are covering this story like Cinematical and Moviefone as well as dozens of looney tunes sites. Heck, Roger Ebert (is he sane?) even Tweeted about it.
Here’s the story in a nutshell. There’s old footage from a Charlie Chaplin movie premiere where an older woman who may secretly be a man is walking down the street while talking on what may secretly be a cell phone all the way back in 1928.
Check out the vid:
I gotta’ admit that it if I saw someone walking down the street my first thought would be that they were talking on the phone but this seems like kinda’ flimsy evidence to jump to the conclusion of time travel to me but I’m just here to bring you the latest and greatest stories on the google machine. And besides “The Big Lebowski” and “In America,” “Time Bandits” might be my favorite movie of all time.
So…you seeing time travel here?
October 26, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Who, pray tell, would one be talking TO on a cell phone in 1928…before cell towers and a network…???
October 26, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Maximus stole my question. There would have to be a second time traveler who brought a phone and a cell tower with him.
October 26, 2010 at 9:45 pm
Good point, Max-ten!
Let's assume instead it's not a cell phone but an ansible. Wouldn't time travelers have at least a throat mike and bone-conduction speakers for their communication devices? Generally when time-traveling you don't want to attract the attention of the locals.
Scratch that… I just realized it's an iAnsible and Steve Jobs decided time travelers need to look cool (Grandfather paradox notwithstanding).
October 26, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Come on people, how would this ancient cell tower "problem" get in the way of a time traveller??
October 26, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Haha! I love this comment from someone on YouTube: "I saw an old woman talking to a plastic doll last week. Could it be… there were crazy people in 1920..?"
October 26, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Never mind time travel, I'm still trying to figure out why we drive on the parkway and park in the driveway.
October 26, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Two comments on the youtube version with different takes.
One suggested the video may be edited – which may well be correct.
The other made said that of course there were no devices that small in 1928 that one could talk into.
Regarding the latter, I am not certain. Is it correct? Certainly the transistor was not invented until 1947 (I think that is right), so that if this person is talking on radio to someone else – need not be a cellphone, could just be walkie-talkie one-to-one – it would have to be valve-based. I was an amateur radio operator from the late 1960s until the early 1980s and I know that there were hand-carryable walkie-talkies even in the late 1950s. Is it possible this woman is talking on one in 1928?
I suppose not – but just wondered. I think we make assumptions about the past that may not be so.
For the record, I was born in 1942, so, no, I don't know anything about 1928 electronics from experience 🙂
I suppose video-editing is the likeliest explanation – boring, but likely.
jj
October 26, 2010 at 11:16 pm
I must admit, it's better than most Bigfoot films I've seen.
October 26, 2010 at 11:54 pm
jj: "I suppose video-editing is the likeliest explanation – boring, but likely."
Well, this man *is* a filmmaker trying to promote his movies…
October 27, 2010 at 12:13 am
My take is that she has an earache, and she's holding a bag that's got ice or medicine in it.
October 27, 2010 at 12:21 am
Read "Three Days to Never" by Tim Powers. It'll explain everything.
October 27, 2010 at 12:22 am
Perhaps it was a hearing aid: http://hearing.siemens.com/ca/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?year=1924
October 27, 2010 at 12:24 am
http://hearing.siemens.com/ca/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?year=1924
October 27, 2010 at 12:30 am
How about it is a a man in drag shielding his face so as not to be so obvious about the fact that he is a man. Maybe he lost a bet. 😉
October 27, 2010 at 12:31 am
It looks like she's holding her open fingers near her temple, like she has an itch or is trying to remember something.
BTW "1928 electronics" is an impossibility. They had vacuum tubes, electronics weren't invented until the transistor.
October 27, 2010 at 12:40 am
BTW "1928 electronics" is an impossibility. They had vacuum tubes, electronics weren't invented until the transistor.
Not sure what you mean. Vacuum tubes are electronic devices. The only question is whether they made anything compact enough to be one-hand carryable. As I said above, I certainly know there were some vacuum tube devices in the 1950s that would have (just) made it.
As someone else above points out, Siemens had a carbon-mike hearing aid device – no electronics in it – from 1924 that you held to your ear.
So some sort of electronic, or electrical-only, device does not seem an impossibility.
jj
October 27, 2010 at 2:35 am
Time Bandits? What was it with 80's sci-fi/fantasy and dwarves?
Unless the phone itself had a little T.A.R.D.I.S. magic, this woman had to have a companion who traveled with her or else the phone is sending a signal through a rift in time.
October 27, 2010 at 4:57 am
Pause at the 3:40 mark. The sparklies on the zebra nose are in color. I don't know anything about video-editing… but that seems a little weird.
October 27, 2010 at 5:01 am
Read "Three Days to Never" by Tim Powers. It'll explain everything.
Or The Anubis Gates, by Powers as well.
October 27, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Nevermind any of this. You all are failing to ask the most important question: why would someone with the ability to travel back in time choose to go to a Charlie Chaplin movie premier? That alone is proof to me that it's not a time traveler.