I didn’t see this until two days ago, so I actually don’t know when it was first published on the internet, and I didn’t have a chance to comment on it. If it wasn’t for cracked.com, this probably would have completely gone and passed me by.

Looks as if someone has found a lady in an old Charlie Chaplin movie from 1928 who was on a cell phone…I don’t want to comment just yet, I want you to see it first:

Before people start saying it was a radio, or walkie-talkie or something like that, let me send you to this article I found from observer.com:

Fox Reports: Time Traveler Caught on Film!

By Ben Popper

October 29, 2010 | 1:34 p.m

Oooh boy. Fox, not one to pass up a item trending strongly on Twitter, is reporting on a 1928 Charlie Chaplin film that appears to show a time traveler talking on a cellphone. Remember folks, as host Megyn Kelly informs us, the cell phone “would not be invented for decades.”

She throws it over to Trace Gallagher, who has watched this video and at least a dozen times and confirms that it “really is weird.”

The film was shot outside the Chinese Theater in Hollywood before a screening of the Charlie Chaplin film, The Circus.

Blurry footage shows a woman holding something to her ear and possibly talking at the same time.

Blogger Jason Kottke, who is responsible for the Charlie Chaplin Time Travel Cell Phone meme’s recent popularity, speculates that it may in fact be a external vacuum tube hearing aid.

Hmmm, better get to the bottom of this, Fox. “So we checked, was it a transistor radio?” asks Gallagher. “Nope, not invented for twenty years. Was it a walkie talkie, nope, not invented for ten years.”

Megyn Kelly tries to be helpful. “Maybe she was singing into a radio.” Hmmm, sorry Megyn, we just established it couldn’t be a radio. Perhaps you time traveled to that question from 30 seconds ago and missed that portion of this stunning investigation.

bpopper [@observer] com

OK, so I get it, there has to be a rational explanation to this, but it really does look like the individual is talking on a cell phone…but I’m still not going to give my opinion on it just yet.  This next article has some astrophysicist discussing the internet sensation, from gossipopi.com:

Time Traveler Caught On Film? Charlie Chaplin Video Explained

Maria F | Oct 30, 2010 | Comments 97

Time Traveler Caught On Film: Charlie Chaplin Time Travel Cell Phone Explained – A Belfast movie-lover is convinced he has discovered a cellphone in one of Charlie Chaplin’s movies that was filmed in 1928.

After a year of analysis, research and digging George Clarke posted a video on Youtube where he goes out of his way to show that there is a mobile phone in Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus movie, in the DVD extras menu in Documents/The Hollywood Premiere that was shot in 1928.

In the clip we we can see a woman putting her hand near her ear talking as she walks in the street all alone. Clarke may believes that he saw a cell phone and may have created an internet sensation with his clip but experts and non believers in time traveling are singing another tune.

Some find the information that he shares in his clip is very confusing so they dismiss his various hypotheses and say that he simply manipulated the film.

Others believe that the woman was simply scratching her ear, or was trying to hide from the camera or the hot sun.

Another theory is that the supposed “time traveler” could have been hard of hearing and was wearing a Western Electric Model 34A Audiphone Carbon Hearing Aid.

It is certain that time traveling theory is much more exciting, but even if space and time travel were possible, what is “very unlikely”, says an astrophysicist, is that there is no way she would have been able to carry anything larger than a subatomic particle.

OK, even I admit, as much of a dreamer as I am and as much I would love (LOVE) this to be true, how can it be true? I live in a world where I want to believe in the Bermuda Triangle, Loch Nes Monster, Big Foot, Ghosts, Aliens, the Chupacabra, government conspiracies, Skynet, alternate/parallel worlds…but in the grand scheme of things, I’ve not only read and watched enough to know that there is absolutely no proof that any of that exists. And as much as that hurts my dreamer heart, I’ve given in, just a little, and I’ve taken the approach that if it is real, one day we’ll see something about it. Like: “Breaking News, Alien Mother Ship seen hovering over Earth” or something along those lines.

As for the time traveler caught on film, having worked, minimally, in film in a whole slew of roles, I know just as much as anyone with half a brain that if the director of the piece didn’t want the person to have something to their head and talking, they wouldn’t have been. If some jerk off is still talking to themselves as they are walking while budget money is flying out the window, you kick them off of your set. Why would anyone put up with that? It’s not like this was a documentary, it was a film, a scripted film, if there was something the director didn’t want getting onto the precious film, they would have had the person stop or removed.

My final analysis of it is it was either doctored or the person was legitimately scratching or covering their face. Until we can see it from the perspective of what the person was supposed to be doing, nothing crazy or other worldy is at work here.

Sadly, as I’ve gotten older, my cynical more realistic side comes into play and knocks my day dreamer off…but that doesn’t mean that my dreamer side doesn’t see a story out of this…