In the last few days, an awful lot of web space has been devoted to the lady ‘time traveller’ filmed in 1928, who appears to be chatting away on a mobile.
Of course back then, the film crew were focusing on a Charlie Chaplin premiere, rather than splits in the space-time continuum. But through the eyes of those living in 2010, where mobile phones are omnipresent, the first reaction of many is to reach a fantastical conclusion.
Alternative readings of this silent clip have quickly appeared. The most popular being that she’s using a hearing device – possibly a Siemens carbon amplifier. The hand position looks right… but who’s she talking to?
Keeping with carbon hearing aid theme, could she be wearing a device like the one above – one of several designs in our collections. Many include palm-sized microphone units, often attached to a cord around the wearer’s neck. She could be adjusting the volume by talking into it.
Or maybe it’s something more old-fashioned like this small, flat ear trumpet. It is British, but typical of compact ‘mobile-sized’ models in very common use just a few years earlier. The ear-piece turns in at 90 degrees to the body with the device held alongside the cheek.
Unless identified as a long-gone great aunt, we’re unlikely to find out precisely what she was doing.
She’s definitely talking though. Did the cameras make her nervous? Or is she manoeuvering around for a better signal – oblivious to the total lack of service providers and phone masts?
Maybe she was just talking to herself. A lot of people do. But with all respect to the lady in question, when it comes to time travellers I kind of hope they’ll look as out of place and time – and as cool – as the mystery guy in shades who turned up on a Canadian Museum site a few years back.
Now, where did he come from?
3 comments on “Time Travel – For The Hard Of Hearing?”
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I had not seen flat ear trumpets before.
It’s also been suggested that it could have been an ear trumpet
(https://www.livescience.com/strangenews/time-traveler-chaplin-film-101028.html and https://forgetomori.com/2010/fortean/understanding-the-time-travellers/ )
Given that they seem such archaic pieces of technology, and the source of some visual humour, I think there is just a common perception that ear trumpets were invariably ‘trumpet sized’. As the example above shows – as do those in the links Mia provided – there was a whole range of ear trumpets that were essentially palm-sized and relatively discreet.