Wires? Where we're going we don't need wires. A bizarre video from 1938 appearing to show a woman talking a on a cellphone has gone viral, with some speculating the only true explanation is time travel.
(See video below)
Grainy black-and-white footage clearly shows a set of young people, who some believe could be factory workers, exiting a building together. As three women pass in front of the camera, a curly-haired brunette in a white or light-colored dress in the middle smiles while turning out of frame, appearing to be chatting on a cellphone in the palm of her hand. After the clip randomly emerged about a year ago, an explosion of conspiracy theories immediately followed. Now, though, the mystery behind the odd footage may have been solved.
Last month, a YouTube user going by the name Planetcheck commented that they knew the "time traveling" woman in the clip. Sadly, it wasn't a pre-blowout Doc Brown as many had hoped.
"She was 17 years old," Planetcheck wrote. "I asked her about this video and she remembers it quite clearly. She says Dupont [who supposedly owns the factory the women are leaving in the video] 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."
Understandably, YouTube commenters were incredulous, to say the least. Some users noted that the tiny size and "sleek" shape of the potential phone made it impossible for the device to be a prototype from 1938. However, Planetcheck remained undeterred in their explanation, laying responsibility for any misconceptions in the video on the company.
"Maybe they decided it was too far advanced for people and they abandoned the idea," Planetcheck wrote. "Ideas are hatched, prototypes are made and sometimes like this phone they are forgotten until somebody discovers some long lost film of the world first wireless phone and marvels at it... The Romans invented concrete. But it was quickly forgotten and not invented for another thousand years later."
Still, without any official proof from Planetcheck, this is all just more speculation, even if it does sound plausible.
Here's what we do know about mobile phones/cellphones. A New York inventor named Charles E. Alden claimed to have invented a "vest pocket telephone" in a 1906 interview with The Los Angeles Herald, although he apparently was never able to produce the device on a wide scale. The first-ever mobile phone call was made June 17, 1946, from a car in St. Louis. Of course, it was far from what we consider "mobile" today - the phone weighed 80 pounds. The first cellphone call was made by Martin Cooper, general manager of Motorola's Communications Systems Division, on April 3, 1973.