The Charlie Chaplin Time Traveler: Plausible

I woke up this morning with all this talk on Twitter about a time traveler. Needless to say, this bit of info sparked my interest as I am and forever will be infatuated with Marty McFly- and considering the trilogy was just released on Blu-Ray this week, this story was relevant to, well, lots of people.

The scenario takes place in 1928. The Hollywood premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s film “The Circus” brings a mob of people to the Chinese Theatre. These scenes were filmed, I assume to document the event for news or studio records or whatever, and were later released as bonus footage for a Chaplin DVD box set. An Irish film maker, and Chaplin buff, notices and investigates a particular clip of a woman walking alone who is speaking into something she is holding to her ear. Queue WTF moment.

The video below, though long, allows you to see the clip more clearly and in its entirety versus the news clip aired on Fox:

The question: What is this?
The first answer: Cell phone.
The conclusion: Time Travel.
Duh.

Yes, it is a great leap to go from a 1928 clip to time traveler based on about 3 seconds of footage. But to say the least, it is compelling. Even if you do immediately dismiss this, you can’t say that for the slightest instance, you didn’t think “hmmm….”

At the time there are no radios, no walkie talkies, and obviously, not cell phones. The practical response, and actually only logical response, is that the device the woman is holding is a hearing aid. Specifically a Siemens 1924 Hearing Aid:

I will wholeheartedly agree that these look similar. But I still have a problem with this.

1. She is alone.
When walking alone on a sidewalk with one other person about 5 feet in front of you, why would you be using a hearing aid? No one is talking to the woman or paying any attention to her whatsoever. It begs the question as to why she’d be using it at that point in time.

2. She’s at a busy event
Perhaps she’s wanting to hear the event better, but she’s in definite earshot if she is near that zebra statue. In that case, I would imagine a sound amplifier would actually make it too loud. It would be like using on of those at a sporting event- even if you are hard of hearing, the sound would be so muddled from everything going on, I don’t think you could make anything out anyway.

3. She’s talking into it.
In the video above, you can very clearly see the lady is talking into whatever she’s holding to her ear. Why are you talking into a hearing aid? And if you reference number one, she doesn’t seem to be talking to the man in front of her, or anyone behind her. Why is she talking in the first place? We could say she’s a complete nutcase, but she’s at a Hollywood premiere, so I’m going to safety assume she’s fairly well-off and sane.

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Ok, so I’m not convinced it’s a hearing aid. Let’s break this down to what is actually happening again. She’s walking alone. Holding something to her ear. She’s talking into it.

I’m going with a cell phone. Which means she’s from the future and has time traveled to 1928.

Sure, that’s silly, but I’m still going to lay out some points that help support this belief.

1. The clip is real.
Maybe this goes without saying, but this clip is real. It’s commercially available and there would be no reason the studio who released it would have any reason to modify this footage. Even the best CGI artists I don’t think could pull this off, so unlike photos that can be easily manipulated, this one is provides the best evidence of time travel. She is talking into/at something. And thew way she holds the device, it is similar to that of a mobile phone.

2. Why this has surfaced now.
This footage has been around since 1928, so why is this just now brought up to our attention? Because it’s now relative. We finally have an explanation for a device the lady is talking into. No one in generations before us would have ever considered this could be a phone- there is cord and it’s too small (ya know, for the Zack Morris argument). I say the clip was completely undetected until now simply because from the time this clip was made until now, it never mimicked anything that would have been familiar or relevant to those who saw it.

3. How is it an old woman?
I didn’t think this mattered until my dad said it, but he asked why would a time traveler be an old woman? I believe this is easily explainable. Time travel may not exist for hundreds of thousands of years, but if/when it does exist, there will be time travelers of all generations and ages traveling to any place since the beginning of time. We would be getting visitors today. The fact that it’s an old woman is negligible. Think about flight. The first fliers were innovators- younger, healthy men who were excited about technology, science, blah blah blah. Eventually flight became bigger, easier and (the keyword) commercial. It’s not too crazy to think that we can at some point travel to the moon purely for enjoyment. Why wouldn’t the same be for time traveling? This could be 84,000 years from now for all we know, but assuming it follows the exact same pattern of all new technologies (or everything for that matter), it would at some-point be for everyone.

4. The event makes sense.
If you could travel in time, to any point at any time at any place in the world, where would you go? You’d go somewhere to see something that you wish you were a part of, right? I’d love to visit the dinosaurs, but since there’s a little too much danger involved there, I’d go to Elvis’s ’68 Comeback Special. Maybe you’d pick the first Superbowl game or a MLK speech, but it’s all relative to what our interests and loves are. The point is a Charlie Chaplin movie premiere at the Chinese Theatre is something someone would actually want to go back to. It’s not exactly random.

5. Her disposition.
We’ve already stated the woman is alone. But look at her disposition compared to the man in front of her. He’s all business and she looks stoked- even though she’s alone. This could be attributed solely to the fact that she’s at a movie premiere in general, but I can’t help get over her attitude compared to the man in front of her. Maybe he’s not even going and that’s the difference, but it’s worth pointing out.

6. She’s an older, unescorted woman in the 1920’s.
Who goes to movie premieres alone? Especially a woman in 1928? Women could vote at this time, but it was less than a decade before the 19th Amendment was ratified, so a woman’s independence wasn’t exactly commonplace. Wasn’t in the 30’s, the 40’s or the 50’s either. Keep in mind, she’s quite old. The average live expectancy of a woman in the 1920’s was 54.6 years old. Does she look a little older than that to anyone else? Giving her the benefit of the doubt and saying she’s pushing her mid-50’s, statistics would show she’s in her last legs of life- and probably wouldn’t be in good enough health to attend a busy, loud movie premiere.

7. Looking into the camera.
This could be completely by happenstance, but I think there’s still a point to be made. If you are at a big event like this, your focus is on the event. When is it not? When you see other things familiar or interesting to you. When I’m at a concert, I notice, even if I don’t want to, all the production logistics and value. It’s just what I know and am interested in. The man in front of her doesn’t notice the camera, but she does and goes far enough to look directly into it. Could be because she’s been around them more so they just get her attention easier. It’s like looking at letters and automatically reading them, even if you didn’t intend it. And anyone else notice her smirk as she looks into it? It’s as if she knows she shouldn’t be doing it.

8. Cell reception.
This one is above and beyond my knowledge, but the question is about cell reception. Obviously there wouldn’t be any cell towers in the 20’s…well…anywhere. I’m going to put out there though that if we have managed to figure out time travel, we’ve probably figured out the cell service conundrum. Say time travel is commercial, you’d had more and more people traveling then more and more people traveling alone (how many people take their first flight alone?). We would have a social responsibility to create a some sort of communication with those who have traveled. If anything, for troubleshooting purposes. I’m not saying that I have any idea in the slightest how this would work, but I don’t know how time travel would either and this seems more plausible than that. Plus, we do have tower-less communication. They are called walkie talkies. Couldn’t we build on that technology for cell phones in the future? Doesn’t seem too far of a stretch.

9. Hearing aid = Cover up.
This is one for the conspiracy theorist, but couldn’t this hearing aid be a cover up? Like I said, if time travel ever exists, we’d be getting visitors from square one. This would be detrimental for the whole of society if it was figured out before it “existed.” There would have to be an immediate, logical explanation or the government is screwed. Any one still think 9/11 wasn’t government related? Do your research and tell me that the government has never covered up something before.

10. Why isn’t the world better if we time travel? We can stop Hitler.
We all know the issues with this if you have spent any time thinking about going back in the past. We can’t go back to actually change anything. To change a single event in history would eliminate the rest of the world in the present and would have to be rebuilt from the point in time in which is was changed. We are living and breathing our lives now which are not changing and we all know the same history. If we were allowed to change the past, the Holocaust would have never happened as someone from the future, no matter how far ahead it is, would have came back to stop it, thus we’d have no recollection of it whatsoever. When an individual goes in the past, it seems the rest of the world would continue in real time, so unless we’re talking about time being radial instead of linear so multiple presents co-exist, we can’t go back to do anything other than observe. Perfect for a movie premiere, don’t ya think?

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I will gladly play my own devil’s advocate and spit off some debunking aspects, or rather “fishy” things.

It’s pretty convenient that this hit mainstream when the Back To The Future Trilogy was just released. The guy in the video seems sincere that he’s studied this clip for a year and a half, but just strange this was made now and was uploaded exactly one week before the release date.

Bluetooth anyone? If it’s that far in the future, all communications could be hands-free. Hell, we can have a chip in the back of our heads for all we know, and give a verbal of who we want to call. But perhaps with the demands of time travel, this is the only method of communication that works.

It’s strange that the hearing aid device has been pinpointed to a brand and specific product. Siemens could be working on a major release of some sort and taken advantage of the situation. Still, I have no idea why you are talking into a hearing aid…and it doesn’t make the clip any less real.

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So, believe what you like. Even though I’m the one making these points, I still can’t say “oh yes, this is a lady from the future,” though I want to. It’s unsure if we’ll ever uncover the truth about this clip and the possibility of time travel. We all can just believe it’s a hearing aid, but how unromantic is that? And how does any innovation occur if we accepted everything for face value?