Recommended Posts

A video?supposedly shot in the 1930s?depicts a young woman carrying what looks like a cell phone. Is the clip evidence that the woman was a time traveler from the 21st century who forgot to leave her mobile at home?

Keep your DeLoreans in the garage, because the answer is probably no. According to the Daily Mail, the short clip, which, coincidentally, first surfaced a year ago around April Fools' Day, had made a compelling case for conspiracy theorists?until a commenter on YouTube made an even stronger argument.

Identified as "planetcheck," the commenter recently wrote that the woman in the video is actually the commenter's great grandmother, Gertrude Jones.

"She was 17 years old," planetcheck writes. "I asked her about this video and she remembers it quite clearly. She says Dupont had a telephone communications section in the factory. They were experimenting with wireless telephones. Gertrude and five other women were given these wireless phones to test out for a week. Gertrude is talking to one of the scientists holding another wireless phone who is off to her right as she walks by."

Sounds logical, but other commenters aren't convinced. "I'm quite sure it wouldn't be that small, the device she is holding is the size of a modern cell phone, ones in the early 80s needed to be carried in a briefcase and later were huge bricks," a commenter wrote. Others echoed the sentiment and wondered why phones?even those produced many years later?were much larger than the one in the clip.

Planetcheck writes that anyone interested in why the phone never saw the light of day would have to ask Dupont: "Maybe they decided it was too far advanced for people and they abandoned the idea. The Romans invented concrete. But it was quickly forgotten and not invented for another thousand years later. Ideas are hatched, prototypes are made and sometimes like this phone they are forgotten until somebody discovers some long lost film of the world first wireless phone and marvels at it."

Planetcheck also gave an in-depth description of the phone, which Jones apparently got to keep. "It is light brown and made of Bakelite material. It is about 5 inches long and 3 inches wide. It has small buttons on the inside of the phone. The numbers are nearly worn out. They go from 0 to 9. It has the words Dupont Co. on the bottom of the phone. It weighs about a half a pound. The phone is sealed away in a glass box and has not been touched for many years. I have held the box though and am always amazed that this phone was around in 1938 making wireless calls."

more

post-37120-0-83013600-1364852283.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It wouldn't surprise me if mobile phone technology had been available since then, tested, revoked and re-released many years later in the form we remember as the brick for no other reason than to make money

Companies don't release their cutting edge technology to us, they release crap and then tiny upgrades over a long period of time to milk as much money from us as possible.

If you look back to every single gadget / device every made, out of the millions/billions invented, by the law of averages, at least a few would have to have been originally made in such a way that they would still be amazing by todays standards, but they weren't (so we're led to believe) they were all huge clunky clumbsy things with horrendous noise/heat/battery life/speed/ability that over the years got smaller/quieter/faster

I know as technology improves, so does the ability to make better things, but not everything in the entire world had to start life as a building sized monstrosity !

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

'Allo 'Allo This is Nighthawk can you hear me ?

The device in question is an ear trumpet!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

but not everything in the entire world had to start life as a building sized monstrosity !

It did back in the day because surface mount components and integrated circuits were not invented till around 1960. Now a days you can make your projects/prototypes small from the start because a lot of circuity is already packaged in to integrated circuits.

Look at a 555 timer, around 30 components go in to making it, before IC's it would have taken a lot more space to make.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even if she was "holding a cell phone to her ears" she was probably hard pressed to find a cell tower :D

Maybe these are so advanced they communicate directly with another phone. :p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

Hmmm interesting.

 

Well techincally speaking everyone at this very second is travelling into the future.

 

For example, after an hour has passed, you've just travelled one hour into the future.   I don't know why people don't class this as time travel, just because its a slow rate of time travel doesn't mean it isn't time travel.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It wouldn't surprise me...

Thank you! Took the words right out of my mouth.

What makes me laugh is that these conspiracy theorists don't believe that a mobile that size could exist back in the 1930's, but they're completely content to put the whole thing down to time travel. :blink:

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you! Took the words right out of my mouth.

What makes me laugh is that these conspiracy theorists don't believe that a mobile that size could exist back in the 1930's, but they're completely content to put the whole thing down to time travel. :blink:

Haha yeah this totally baffles me too.

At what point do people think that Time Travel would be easier than a smaller device? If that was the case surely we'd all be time travelling by now rather than using mobiles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How did she get reception?

 

Also, people probably don't know, the "Daily Mail" news paper quite often posts lies and are a known racists paper.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Clearly an aid of some kind .... time traveller is ludicrous ... no cell phone towers = no one else to talk to.  Some people are thick in the head if they truly believe this stuff.  It's cool to find videos like this, but the facts are there ... just because we don't know what the reason that woman is holding a device to her ear in the video, doesn't mean it's some outlandish science fiction crap.  The fact is, the first woman has an experimental phone device as she clearly stated.  And the second video is clearly a hearing aid or something ... either way, none of this stuff is related IN THE SLIGHTEST to time travel.  And anyone who truly believes it is, needs to grow up and start living in the world that exists outside of their mind.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Clearly an aid of some kind .... time traveller is ludicrous ... no cell phone towers = no one else to talk to.  Some people are thick in the head if they truly believe this stuff.  It's cool to find videos like this, but the facts are there ... just because we don't know what the reason that woman is holding a device to her ear in the video, doesn't mean it's some outlandish science fiction crap.  The fact is, the first woman has an experimental phone device as she clearly stated.  And the second video is clearly a hearing aid or something ... either way, none of this stuff is related IN THE SLIGHTEST to time travel.  And anyone who truly believes it is, needs to grow up and start living in the world that exists outside of their mind.

Plus if the woman was from the future then she wouldn't have been able to use the phone unless she wants to alter history in someway.

Thank you! Took the words right out of my mouth.

What makes me laugh is that these conspiracy theorists don't believe that a mobile that size could exist back in the 1930's, but they're completely content to put the whole thing down to time travel. :blink:

I do think it could have exisited, but it is likley a prototype that was simply ahead of its time so it was shelved.  Plus take into account that the world was still in the great depression at the time, no one would have been able to afford one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmm interesting.

 

Well techincally speaking everyone at this very second is travelling into the future.

 

For example, after an hour has passed, you've just travelled one hour into the future.   I don't know why people don't class this as time travel, just because its a slow rate of time travel doesn't mean it isn't time travel.

 

Uh, no. That is just the natural progression of time. You don't say you've physically traveled anywhere while you're sitting still, do you? Of course not. But technically, the earth is both moving on its axis AND in its orbit, so you're actually going pretty far. Time travel denotes passing through time in a way that is different than normal. If you wanted to make the argument that astronauts are time travelers (because less time (milliseconds less) passes for them while they are in orbit) then I could see that argument.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Uh, no. That is just the natural progression of time. You don't say you've physically traveled anywhere while you're sitting still, do you? Of course not. But technically, the earth is both moving on its axis AND in its orbit, so you're actually going pretty far. Time travel denotes passing through time in a way that is different than normal. If you wanted to make the argument that astronauts are time travelers (because less time (milliseconds less) passes for them while they are in orbit) then I could see that argument.   

Good point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.