Time Traveller Caught on 1928 Charlie Chaplin Film?

Hi Holly,

I don't think any of us are certain of anything. Nothing's been thrown out with the dirty bath water.

We are merely speculating and trying to come to a concensus and/or conclusion on what they may or may not be.

We are simply basing our suppositions on what we feel we have seen in the pictures. As well as what George Clarke has found while looking at them in a much larger format.

That is not to debase anyone else's opinions in any way.

But to be insulting because we don't agree with you is something else altogether.

It looks like the person becomes transparent at the end of the clip and disappears. Is that rignt?

Also, quite some time ago on Coast to Coast someone submitted a photo, I believe it was taken in the early 1950's - it shows too men in suits standing outside on the sidewalk on a residential street. The guy in the foreground appears to be holding a cell phone to his ear! Coincidence? Maybe not!

WTF, Is it just me or has ATS gone insane?

All this hoopla over a lady covering her face in the Sun. She could also be speaking to the guy in front. There is nothing extraordinary here.

I am open to the idea of time travel for a technologically advanced race but I doubt they will be using bulky cell phones for communication. LOL!

Originally posted by endless_observer
I know that this will get completely ignored, but has anyone considered that this is perhaps a crystal radio?

Hi Endless Observer,

The crystal diodes radio is an interesting scenario. I'll have to look them up.

But I really think that the technology that we have today has all been back-engineered and manufactured from the numbers of spacecraft that were either brought down or crashed on their own, such as Roswell's infamous saucer-fall-down-and-go-boom. And that was a decade later in the '40's.

Very interesting theories however. Thank you VERY MUCH for contributing your POSITIVE imput!

reply to post by zazzafrazz


Well, personally, I believe the man who supplied the YouTube video via upload is hoaxing people.

It is easy as Hell to edit a video and add images to videos and make overlays of two different videos.

However, let us not forget a man who invented many things, ahead of his time.

Quote from : Wikipedia : Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla (Serbian: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer.

He was an important contributor to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor.

This work helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.

If you have read anything about Tesla you would know that this man had many patents.

And as well he had many bought up and squashed.

Also he had many rivals in the world which still hold his patents in secret safes.

Quote from : Wikipedia : Wireless Energy Transfer

Wireless energy transfer or Wireless Power is the process that takes place in any system where electrical energy is transmitted from a power source to an electrical load without interconnecting wires.

Wireless transmission is useful in cases where instantaneous or continuous energy transfer is needed but interconnecting wires are inconvenient, hazardous, or impossible.

Wireless energy transfer is different from wireless transmission of information, such as radio, where the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or the percentage of power received becomes critical only if it is too low to adequately recover the signal.

With wireless power transmission, efficiency is the more important parameter.

The most common form of wireless power transmission is carried out using induction, followed by electrodynamic induction.

Other present-day technologies for wireless power include those based upon microwaves and lasers.

Now, as to the veracity of a cell phone showing up in a Charlie Chaplin movie, I say it is a hoax.

Perpetuated by someone who is starved for attention and knows no other way to garner it.

Like the Balloon Boy Hoax of Richard Heene and his son, a waste of time, nothing more, nothing less.

But I will say that Nikola Tesla had the patents for the pager, or beeper, and I.C.B.M. missile, in his day.

You just never know sometimes.

Originally posted by amagnus
WTF, Is it just me or has ATS gone insane?

All this hoopla over a lady covering her face in the Sun. She could also be speaking to the guy in front. There is nothing extraordinary here.

I am open to the idea of time travel for a technologically advanced race but I doubt they will be using bulky cell phones for communication. LOL!

I believe its people like you who wreck ATS by not letting good topics like this be debated and throw out the "WTF this thread is BS" "WTF Lady cleaning her ear with a q-tip thread over" etc. These are the fun topics that brought a lot of people to ATS.

Some may believe this is a time traveler some may not. I wouldn't shoot down either argument. Obviously you're an expert in time travel though and know what type of communication one would use? You also know for sure she is covering her face from the sun?

reply to post by amagnus


Your 2 posts you have made just replying to this topic are pretty nice. Good way to start out on ATS you may have been a lurker, but not the way to start my friend. Sorry to go off topic.

There were probably a lot of actors on the set. Who knows? It could have been a woman just pretending to be on a very early version of a land line phone. She might have been just practicing her lines.

There's not enough in that one shot to make the jump that time travel is involved.

reply to post by DevolutionEvolvd


Well I hate to burst everyone's bubble but I do not want people even thinking that the notion of time travel how its presented in the media is even possible because its not. I'm not saying 100 percent that I am certain but I would say about 99.5 percent certain that what the person on the video is talking on an early version of a hearing aid. Do some research and you can find pictures of the devices that sold pretty regularly during that time. The debunking of this mystery is as follows, first the person is old that is check one and it explains perfectly why that person is using such a device. Two everyone knows super beneficial technology goes to the military first and the military did not have a mobile two way radio until the 40's. Third all footage from a studio of that magnitude is screened heavily so the likely hood of something as monumental as a time traveler being caught on film and being released on a dvd is really slim to none. Forth just by sheer logic alone if you notice the man walking ahead of the old lady do you think he would have kept walking if someone was really talking on a mobile phone in the 20's. Now on to the exciting part; the reason why I said not 100 percent sure is because if it is an hearing aid which I'm willing to bet money on that it is, it still doesn't explain why she is talking because obviously at the time no one is listening. That is the only part I can't seem to figure out but I still do not believe it was a time traveler. If you see ads for hearing aids during that time I think you might jump on board as well.

Well I hate to burst everyone's bubble but I do not want people even thinking that the notion of time travel how its presented in the media is even possible because its not. I'm not saying 100 percent that I am certain but I would say about 99.5 percent certain that what the person on the video is talking on an early version of a hearing aid. Do some research and you can find pictures of the devices that sold pretty regularly during that time. The debunking of this mystery is as follows, first the person is old that is check one and it explains perfectly why that person is using such a device. Two everyone knows super beneficial technology goes to the military first and the military did not have a mobile two way radio until the 40's. Third all footage from a studio of that magnitude is screened heavily so the likely hood of something as monumental as a time traveler being caught on film and being released on a dvd is really slim to none. Forth just by sheer logic alone if you notice the man walking ahead of the old lady do you think he would have kept walking if someone was really talking on a mobile phone in the 20's. Now on to the exciting part; the reason why I said not 100 percent sure is because if it is an hearing aid which I'm willing to bet money on that it is, it still doesn't explain why she is talking because obviously at the time no one is listening. That is the only part I can't seem to figure out but I still do not believe it was a time traveler. If you see ads for hearing aids during that time I think you might jump on board as well.

reply to post by jbthree


Please use better spacing. This was a good post, but if you had read the whole topic it has been said. We know of the fact that the hearing aid exists etc.

This would have been done better if you had used some spacing as its a hard read.

reply to post by OldDragger


What a fake. I'm a time traveller and i speak in a cellphone where there is no towers and or satilite to recieve a signal. OH, I KNOW, they built a cellphone that can reach the pass of time itself and they are making a phone call to the future. I HAVE ONE OF THOSE YOU KNOW.

reply to post by ExCloud


My bad for the spacing it was my first post, but I didn't see anyone say anything about the hearing aid solution but if someone else figured it out then great. I'm just looking for a community of people who think like I do and aren't just buying into anything and I believe I found it somewhat.

I have been looking on ATS for awhile and I finally figured I would post something that I knew was concrete but it looks like I still f****ed up. No worries though I'm pretty sure something else will come along that I can post to, I'm just trying to help some people that's all.

P.S. How's my spacing...

Originally posted by SusanForKucinich
It looks like the person becomes transparent at the end of the clip and disappears. Is that rignt?

Also, quite some time ago on Coast to Coast someone submitted a photo, I believe it was taken in the early 1950's - it shows too men in suits standing outside on the sidewalk on a residential street. The guy in the foreground appears to be holding a cell phone to his ear! Coincidence? Maybe not!

edit on 23-10-2010 by SusanForKucinich because: (no reason given)

do you know where i can find this picture id like to see it?

Originally posted by windwaker
There were probably a lot of actors on the set. Who knows? It could have been a woman just pretending to be on a very early version of a land line phone. She might have been just practicing her lines.

There's not enough in that one shot to make the jump that time travel is involved.

It is not a set, it is other footage on premiere day of the film,"Circus" the people are not acting, they are passers-by outside the premiere venue. It is possible that this particular film document could have been tinkered with more than once along with the actual film "circus" which was edited by Chaplin for re-release and much later for the original release on digital format. To add confusion, a completely new film also called, "Circus" 10mins, using an old movie camera of the day, was made in 2008 featuring Eugene Chaplin a son of Charlie Chaplin, and produced by Carlo Paiget, the plot of which includes the use of a mobile 'phone, and could also be construed as having a time-travel element in it,

www.retrothing.com...

Then there is this film, Le Pied qui étreint 1: Le Micro bafouilleur sans fil, made in 1916, it interprets as "The clutching foot" The plot also includes the invention of a wireless telephone...which actually had been invented and demonstrated around that time or earlier, including voice. Charlie Chaplin is also central to the plot, and is played by a lookalike.

www.davidbordwell.net...


It's not a hard step to think that Chaplin saw this film at some time and perhaps made a storyboard with a mobile 'phone in it of some sort, and that someone has picked up on it and decided to tinker with the docu film of the premiere. Chaplin himself owned his films and could do what he liked with them, I don't know who owned the docu film in this discussion, but possibly also Chaplin. There is also the use of dissolves in the docu from one scene to another, that would have been fairly novel, (and expensive) at the time, so also something to play about with. So it is fair to say that the Docu film of the premiere is not a piece of pristine film in the first instance.

reply to post by jbthree


Much better yea they have pictures of some hearing aids etc that it could possibly be. Glad you're here. Keep posting my man/women.

reply to post by ExCloud


HIGHLY APPRECIATED!!!!

reply to post by zazzafrazz


Wow, 56 pages! This has really captured the ATS imagination or something.

My take on this: the man walking in front of the woman is probably her husband or friend and she is talking to him. They are movie goers on their way to the movie and see the press filming. He quickly and sternly walks past them and she hold up her hand to cover her face from the paparazzi, as modesty and the desire for anonymity struck her. She is probably telling her husband/friend to slow down lol.

I don't believe she is holding anything. The first image would make whatever she is holding, if anything, very small, about the diameter of a coin. The second image shows her opening up her hand and you can see her forefinger and middle finger rising. This would make it very difficult to hold anything. What's really annoying is that one or two more seconds of filming her would have clinched it.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a6d23636e8fb.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/aeb6d2206daf.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by Nicolas Flamel


Im just saying in most cases I hold my phone with only my thumb, and pinky and ring finger. My pointer and middle touch nothing. Also my ring often isnt on the phone as well. I am just saying.

reply to post by maceov


back at ya, maceov...seriously if I meant to be condescending, it would have definitely been said, straight out. I was merely stating an observation. As you said, basically everyone was is just trying to figure out "what" the situation is.

Good Luck to all in doing so...


~holly