"The future ain't what it used to be."

Did film footage from 1928 capture a time traveler

Mop

Timekeeper
Behind the scenes footage from a 1928 Charlie Chaplain film seems to have caught what appears to be a person holding a small device to their ear and talking into it. A time traveler?

Watch here.
 
The trouble is......she'd have to be talking to someone else with a mobile phone. Clearly there would have to be a second person. That would mean you'd need all the infrastructure, masts, relay stations, etc etc, to exist too.

When you look at the video closely.....I'm not sure that 'she' IS actually a she. The way those shoes fit looks very odd indeed, in fact her feet are bigger than those of the guy in front ! And the face, when 'she' turns a little....looks very much a male face.

So, there may be a quite simple reason why a male 'extra', asked to play a female part, was covering his face...and probably cracking a joke with someone behind the stage.
 
Clearly she's not a time travel. She's an alien. And this is a forum for time travelers.
 
They say it's just a hearing aid but what is she trying to hear? Pretty big for a cell phone and it probably wouldn't work back then and walkie talkies weren't used until 1940.

I don't know what to make of it.
 
The trouble is......she'd have to be talking to someone else with a mobile phone. Clearly there would have to be a second person. That would mean you'd need all the infrastructure, masts, relay stations, etc etc, to exist too.
Some cell phones can act as walkie talkies, meaning they can communicate in a limited range without cell towers. If you were travelling in time, you'd want a friend and a good way to communicate. /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
A society with enough technology could generate signals that move across time as well as space. That said, we will soon find out more information when people come forward with the movie extra's name. I have a bunch of old Charlie Chaplin movies. It is not on any of mine.

Today's selection is take from http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2010/11/wrong-path.html
"In 2010, the median income of U.S. households very likely dropped from the $49,777 recorded in 2009 to a level roughly $2,500 lower: $47,211."
 
OK, OK...

So we have a film maker who has been showing this around for about 18 months. He picked up "The Chaplin Collection Vol 2" (actually it looks like a complete Vol 1 & Vol 2 box set though I can't find it online in that form. It may be a Euro box set that wasn't released here in the US).

He picked it up for 15 quid, about $30.00.

Maybe yes maybe no. If yes he sure got a really great deal. New, Vol 1 runs around $75 and Vol 2 around $250 (used $180 for Vol 2).

So, if anyone is really, really interested in seeing the special edition of The Circus for themselves so they can see the footage referenced above it's available on Amazon.
 
Raul,

Yes indeed.


Actually I found The Circus Special Edition on Amazon as a standalone. It runs around $60-$75.
 
Behind the scenes footage from a 1928 Charlie Chaplain film seems to have caught what appears to be a person holding a small device to their ear and talking into it. A time traveler?

Depending on which footage is seen where ( as there are numerous sites with that footage to be viewed ) ; Some of the views it seems that the individual doesn't have anything in their hands at all, but is merely trying to hide their face from the camera. I am not a professional lip reader, but the individual does turn and seems to say something, appearing ( to me ) to say " Please stop " to the cameraman.

As far as needing an infra-structure to use something similar to a cell-phone back in that time period, isn't necessarily so.

IF this had been filmed in New York, and not in California ;
IF the individual actually was carrying something;
AND IF Tesla was involved;
That individual could have had some sort of wireless communication device.

Tesla DID experiment with wireless communication using "Earth Energy" and even filed a patent for such...so seeing someone with a wireless communication device in "that" era actually might not be all that unusual.
 
Depending on which footage is seen where ( as there are numerous sites with that footage to be viewed ) ; Some of the views it seems that the individual doesn't have anything in their hands at all, but is merely trying to hide their face from the camera. I am not a professional lip reader, but the individual does turn and seems to say something, appearing ( to me ) to say " Please stop " to the cameraman.

Exactly. That's why I suggested that someone, if they are really curious enough to dole out $60 or more (assuming they don't already own a copy), needs to look at the original scene from their copy of "The Circus Special Edition" so they can draw their own conclusions.

There are explanations about what the device could be (if there really is a device) that are not out of place, entirely available in 1928, aren't hearing aids and are used for communication. I don't see any device but if it is there why does it have to be a cell phone? How about a crystal radio receiver for instance. All you need is a small coil wrapped around a crystal "slider" bar (tuning device), a couple of caps, a resistor, a diode and a small speaker. They can be small enough to fit in a cigar tube and have been around since, yes, the 1920's. Is that what it is? I don't know. But there are more mundane possibilities that don't involve time travel.

The logic that the young filmmaker uses is a bit faulty:

Proposition: The pedestrian is holding a small device to his/her ear and speaking therefore it must be two-way cell phone-like communication device thus the pedestrian is a time traveler.

Inference: The pedestrian is holding the device in a manner similar to what cell phone users employ.

Inference: The device is out-of-place circa 1928.

Inference: No one has been able to explain the actions of the pedestrian to me.

Conclusion: Therefore the device is a two-way "phone" of some sort thus the pedestrian is a time traveler.

It's circular logic in the sense that the conclusion is nothing more than a restatement of the proposition. Each of the inferences "beg the question": What device? Why is the action (or even the device if there is one) "out of place"? Why is the fact that no one can otherwise explain the situation important to the conclusion? The latter one also employs the fallacy argumentum ad ignorantiam - argument from ignorance, i.e. no one can prove it false thus it must be true. Even if it is proved that the gadget is a communication device the further conclusion that the pedestrian is a time traveler is a non sequitur. There's no logical support for that conclusion.
 
If it was an intergalactic or inter-time cell phone and you had the technology to make that, wouldn;t you also have the tech to make into something smaller. That thing was a brick!
 
I'm reading an archived site of... http://web.archive.org/web/*/timetravelbureau.cjb.net

under Secret Projects... http://bit.ly/fhM804

Quote, "The U.S. government was involved in a project called the Temporal Transmission Research Project. They would place an object inside a hollow aluminum tube and then subject the tube to a high frequency electromagnetic field that travels faster than light. The tube (and its contents) were supposed to be able to travel into the past. It was said that a government scientist had volunteered to go back to the year 1918, remain for 25 minutes of subjective time, then return. He went, but never returned. The project members then decided to look over old publications (from 1918) looking for clues as to what happened. After about two months of searching, they found an old microfiche copy of a police journal which had a very strange article in it. In the article, it shows what appears to be (in a picture) a metal tube about two feet long and containing the crushed remains of a man. Also, in the picture, is what looks like a cellular phone (lying on the ground) about one to two feet away." End quote.

I'd like to see the contents of those old publications and what year the 'cellular phone' was manufactured. The event would be 10 years before The Circus debut.
 
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