Tech | November 01, 2010 | 9 comments

Mystery of the time-traveling, 1928 cell phone solved

source: http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2010/10/mystery-of-the-time-traveling-1928-cell-phone-solved

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Mcellie
Sorry Back to the future fans, you're not going to end up as the Time Traveller in the Charlie Chaplin film after befriending the local mad neighbour.

Turns out the mystery is solved with just a simple picture of a square phone shaped ear trumpet. The old women was just using a hearing aid, instead of managing to find a phone signal in 1928 after time travelling.

"What [Insanely long-winded] Irish filmmaker George Clarke didn’t consider was that a simple ear trumpet could still explain it all, said hearing device historians.
“As you can tell from these pictures, old-fashioned mechanical or resonating hearing aids were not necessarily long and rounded,” said Philip Skroska, an archivist at the Bernard Becker Medical Library of Washington University in St. Louis.
“Short, compact rectangular forms were not unusual.” In other words, they could look something like a cell phone to imaginative YouTube viewers in the 21st century. "-Live Science
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    Community,   Tech,   WTF,   Technology
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    Science,  Phone,  Mystery,  Charlie Chaplin,  4 more
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9 comments // Mystery of the time-traveling, 1928 cell phone solved

  • UtopianSky
    • +2
      UtopianSky  

    • No!
      It's a government cover-up, I tell you!
      Like claiming UFO's are weather balloons, or that fossils used to be dinosaurs!
      She was a time traveler from the future, and no evidence will ever, ever, ever, convince me otherwise!
      And I'm sure this was all predicted in the Bible, and by Nostradamus, and has something to do with 2012!

      Don't you dare tell me facts when I'm ranting!

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  

    • i was wondering how she got a signal when I get dropped every time I go under a tree or a cloud or a bug flys by. She must not be useing verizon

    • 1 year ago
  • NiceN
    • +2
      NiceN  

    • This explanation is nice, but does not consider why the lady is yapping away. Isn't the ear trumpet an instrument to aid hearing? Then why would she be continuously having a conversation into the black device?

    • 1 year ago
  • dreamsenvoy
  • richjm
  • CCorsair
    • +1
      CCorsair  

    • yes Clark did if you watch the opening of his video he said they look at ear trumpets and said none fit the size or time of the film . Plus it still does not cover why if it was she or he were talking as there was no one around them As they walked plus the one you have shown was not from 28 but is from later in 29 to 30 and was not used widely in the US. I don't think it was a time traveler but it was some using some kind of device that was not suppose to be there.. LOL who know maybe by every one arguing what it we discover it was traveler who goes back to see what it was and they are it ..lol hey what when they see the camera they laugh ..they found they are the traveler lol

    • 1 year ago
  • floydyboy
  • CCorsair
    • 0
      CCorsair  
    • floydyboy:

      Well it makes a good paradox if it happens that way.. i still feel if travel back its one way trip or at best a trip that screws up the time line of the traveler . So the can never come back to the same time line . and again Clark said they look at the ear horns for that time So it going to be years before we can find out as video re-digitizing will let clear up the footage more .. till then to all the trapped Time traveler.. Please send me all the lotto numbers you have . And stop voting you're screwing up the future and you'll never be born ..

      CC

    • 1 year ago
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