At first glance, it looks like an ordinary snapshot of a New York street in 1936. But online observers say one small detail in the picture proves that time travel is real, and the claim has set off a fresh round of speculation.
The photograph shows a street scene in Brooklyn’s Union Square. In the foreground, one man is doing something that seems very out of place for the time.
A phone before its time
The man appears to be pressing a cell phone against his ear. Gadgets like that did not exist until the 1980s, so conspiracy theorists are convinced he is a time traveller who slipped into the wrong decade.
There are, of course, more ordinary explanations: he could be holding another object, or simply scratching his head. Still, the picture has been enough to get people talking.
It is also not the first time an old image has been said to show a mobile phone long before its invention. Film footage from 1938 has also been used to argue that time travel is real.
The woman in the 1938 footage
In that clip, several people walk toward the camera. One young woman holds something against the side of her head with one hand. She seems to be talking as she moves through the crowd, and she lowers the object just before the footage ends.
The moment has sparked debate over whether she was really using a cell phone. One online sleuth has offered a very specific story.
A YouTube channel called Planetcheck alleges that the woman was the owner’s great-grandmother, and that the device was an experimental wireless telephone developed by Dupont at their plant in Leominster, Massachusetts.
"The lady you see is my great-grandmother Gertrude Jones," the user said. "She was 17 years old. I asked her about this video and she remembers it quite clearly."
The user said Dupont had a telephone communications section in the factory, where staff tested wireless telephones. Gertrude and five other women were given phones to try for a week, and in the video she is talking to a scientist holding another phone just off to her right.
An even older puzzle
The mystery does not stop in the twentieth century. Conspiracy theorists also point to a 1670 painting by Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch, in which one figure appears to be holding something that looks remarkably like an iPhone.
The supposed phone can be seen in the hand of a man standing on the right side of the composition.
For now, none of these images has been proven to show a time traveller, and the simpler explanations remain just as possible. The 1936 photograph, the 1938 film and the 1670 painting continue to circulate online, and people keep arguing over what the figures in them are really holding.
Image credit: Berenice Abbott/Brooklyn Museum Collection
Source: The Mirror US
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