The Time Traveler in the Charlie Chaplin Footage

It's a big deal on the net right now that a filmmaker seems to have found a woman talking on a cell phone back in 1928 in the features section of a Chaplin film.  Here are a few problems:

1.  If you come from far enough in the future to time travel, you probably aren't carrying a phone about the size of a Motorola Razr.

2.  Whoever put the DVD together could have inserted this person.

3.  Okay, you have a cell phone, where are the towers you need to get a signal?

4.  Okay, you have a cell phone, who are you talking to on the cell phone?

5.  My suggestion is that she's holding something black against her face.  A cold compress for pain in the jaw or ear, perhaps?

Comments

[Tony Christian]

It's much ado about nothing, although as I have pointed out in my own comments, it is illustrative of the common error of reading back into historic data current circumstances and attitudes. We naturally interpret someone in that pose as speaking on a phone, but what someone in that era would think of it is what really matters? No one is really even paying any attention to her, but if she were walking along talking out loud to apparently no one, she would be getting a lot of curious looks, at least, if not a net thrown over her head.

[Christopher Hathaway]

I remember when bluetooth came out and how startling it was to see people walking in public and apparently talking to themselves. 20 years before, that was a clear sign of metal illness.

[Passerby]

The Star Trek: TOS communicator was about the size of a Motorola Razr. Were humpback whales endangered in 1928?

[Margaret]

It's a super heavy function, bigger than normal cell phone because it has to generate waves that are big enough to time travel to the future towers and bounce back. She's talking to someone in the future.

Obviously.

[Martha]

One respondent posted to a website featuring the video the suggestion to search using the terms "Siemens" and "1924". I did, and sure enough,Siemens patented a slim, rectangular hand-sized device in 1924 which was marketed as a discreet alternative to ear trumpets. I found the suggestion buried in a large group of comments, but it didn't seem to get much notice. I guess ordinary, reasonable explanations need not apply.

[Martha]

I forgot to add my guess about why the woman appeared to be speaking to no one in particular. If this was some type of hearing aid, perhaps it was new and she was testing to see if it made her own voice more audible. A hoax is another possibility, but the man(a film-maker)who appears to be the first to post the images says he noticed the person while viewing a commercially distributed dvd. I'm also wondering if sales of the boxed set he cited as his source have increased.

[Bull]

"I guess ordinary, reasonable explanations need not apply." Well sure. How about, she saw the camera and didn't want her face photographed.

[shannon]

why don't we travel back in time to make sure it was a cell phone? Duh!!! LOL!!!

[David]

It seems to me that she must be scratching or rubbing her ear because so many people are talking about her ...in the future!

[Milton Stanley]

The answer is not so much in the Motorola Razr as in Occam's razor. The most likely explanation is that it's a hoax.