Featured Image Credit: LeominsterTV/YouTube
Topics: Viral, Technology
Aisha Nozari
Conspiracy theory fodder doesn't get much better than this 1930s video of a woman appearing to use a mobile phone.
The clip has left some internet users (you know, the tinfoil hat wearing types) convinced the footage is proof of time travel, but those who don’t spend their time skulking around obscure forums aren’t so sure.
In the admittedly eerie clip, captured in 1938, a woman in vintage get-up can be seen walking in a crowd while appearing to speak into an object that she’s holding to her ear.
Check the footage out below:
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The group looked as though it was leaving a factory building and the footage first popped up on the web back in 2013.
At the time, a YouTuber known as Planetcheck claimed the woman in the video was an aunt of theirs called Gertude Jones.
According to Yahoo, Planetcheck penned almost a decade ago: “She was 17 years old [when the video was filmed].
"I asked her about this video and she remembers it quite clearly. She says Dupont had a telephone communications section in the factory.
“They were experimenting with wireless telephones. Gertrude and five other women were given these wireless phones to test out for a week.
“Gertrude is talking to one of the scientists holding another wireless phone who is off to her right as she walks by."
Although the claims were reported on by a handful of big news outlets, they’ve never been 100 percent verified, although Planetcheck’s version of events seems a whole bunch more plausible than time travel.
While we’re on the topic of zipping to and fro between decades, we’d like to draw your attention to an 1860 painting by Ferdinand George Waldmüller, which some people believe is also proof of time travel because the young woman in the artwork appears to be holding an iPhone.
The painting depicts a serene scene of a young woman engrossed in what we can only assume is a book while a young man looks on, waiting to present her with a flower.
After viewing the painting, Peter Russell, a retired local Glasgow Government officer, told Vice: “No one could fail to see the resemblance to the scene of a teenage girl absorbed in social media on their smartphone."
Russell added: “What strikes me most is how much a change in technology has changed the interpretation of the painting, and in a way has leveraged its entire context.”
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