BS: How to ID a time traveler

Subject: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: josepp
Date: 01 Nov 10 - 09:51 PM

They use cell phones long before they existed

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Nov 10 - 10:01 PM

I don't see a cell phone. Someone is projecting what that image might mean today onto an old film.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Nov 10 - 10:21 PM

Well, those from the past are either naked and hairy or dressed funny, and those from the future are also dressed funny. They could also be naked and hairy. Depends on how things go, I guess.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: josepp
Date: 01 Nov 10 - 11:34 PM

And fat and frumpy. Don't forget fat and frumpy. Unless that's a GPS she's hiding under her dress.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Ernest
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 02:41 AM

You put that in the wrong section. It is musical.

That person clearly sings an 89-verse Child ballad with the finger in his ear.

;0)

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Slag
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 03:46 AM

He is followed by a surrounding brilliant rainbow aura of an imploded universe and proceeded by the utter blackness of nothingness. His name is Janus and he is like NOW, baby!

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 04:30 AM

There have been a number of videos and still pics posted with the claim that someone in scenes from the '20s or '30s was using a cell phone.

The devices pictured have been fairly conclusively identified as specific kinds of "compact ear trumpets" that were in fairly common use at the appropriate time - and long before. These were the "high tech" pre-transistor hearing aids.

A few sites have had some illustrative pictures of likely actual devices.

Although it's difficult to simulate the actual performance of the devices that previously existed without actually constructing one, the pre-pre-generations deserve significant respect for how effectively they coped with their handicaps with what now seems exceedingly crude (but sometimes quite elegant) assisting devices.

Failure to recognize what these devices were most likely reflects a profound ignorance on the part of those who assume that cell phones are the only explanation. But sometimes it's fun to be (or pretend to be) "stupid" anyway.

John

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Crane Driver
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 05:38 AM

And, of course, even if someone could go back in time with a cellphone, you couldn't call anyone as the infrastructure wouldn't be there. Cellphones don't work without a network of masts to pick up and relay the signals. Time up on this one.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 05:55 AM

The underpants, always a dead giveaway.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 10:46 AM

Besides, why would they bother?

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: josepp
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 12:12 PM

////These were the "high tech" pre-transistor hearing aids.///

Oh, yeah? then why is she talking on it? And why does she have such big feet? Didn't think about that, did you?

////you couldn't call anyone as the infrastructure wouldn't be there. Cellphones don't work without a network of masts to pick up and relay the signals. Time up on this one.////

She's not from our time either, Mr. Smartypants. She's from 500 years in our own future when cell phones won't need towers and will be so powerful that you can call anyone even in the past or future. Obviously, that what's happening here. They've already read her lips and she's saying, "You're calling from the year 2525? Is mankind still alive? Has woman survived? Have they thrived?" The guy on the other phone then got an idea for a bad song and went back to the late 60s to record it. Do I have to explain everything?

////Besides, why would they bother?////

What? With the underpants? Hell, I don't know! Ask GUEST Patsy.
.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 12:54 PM

Hee hee!

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 02:29 PM

josepp: See. I told you it's fun!

John

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 02:50 PM

In one novel, the time travelers had polio vaccination scars- and the natives ( to that time) did not.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 02:58 PM

Why aren't people standing around gobsmacked at her casually walking and talking into her own hand? Unless they all know she is bats and that she covers her ear so she can hear the voices in her head better.

16 possible explanations from cracked.com

Some are very humorous.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 05:25 PM

John to the technical rescue as usual.

The John Titor story was compelling to say the least however compelling is what good fiction great.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 07:01 AM

As I posted on several of the YouTube sites at the time, it's probably a Siemens Carbon Amplifier, patented in 1924 and used, among other things, as a hearing aid.

Google it and the man in the Siemens ad that somes up looks to be in a very similar posture to the person in the clip.

If she's talking at the same time as holding it to her ear, so what? If you were holding a 2 way conversation would you move your hearing aid away every time you wanted to reply to the other party?

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: GUEST,Penny S. (elsewhere)
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 08:41 AM

But where is the person she is talking to/listening to?

A friend and I, on the road that leads to Biggin Hill, were at a filling station when an old sports car drew up, with a young man with a flying jacket and a white silk scarf driving. It turned out he was wearing the wrong trousers, cords which were baggy to the ankles, and then narrow, so the overall effect was not 40's RAF. We both formed the impression that that was the sort of thing you might see from a time traveller - getting it nearly right. 40 odd years out, and the trousers from the later, not the earlier period.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 09:04 AM

It's a shell phone.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 09:05 AM

She hadn't realised it was a silent film and thought she'd gone deafer than usual!

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 10:36 AM

Look, if you want to ID a time traveller, just ask to borrow the sonic screwdriver.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 02:40 PM

RB - One fellow I knew used that term for his sweetie's B.O.B., so you might get a response from members of the current community.

John

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 03:51 PM

Over here it's a device used by Dr Who.

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 04:30 PM

I would have thought the terminology would be used, maybe not too commonly, over there. Lot's of sellers on your side advertise variants on the current tool(s).

It's not an objection to the same nomenclature being used for more than one tool. Just that it's plausible to assume that someone from the present time would come up with something for which they use that same name.

The problem is in asking for something that you won't be able to identify as the one from a future time or from another distanct place, and we don't know if they might use both kinds - even with the same name - just as we do.

And I'm not sure, but I think there was reference to it (the same one used by the good Doctor) in at least one episode of the original Star Trek, back when they used quite a few "inside jokes" that made reference to commonly known SF ideas from other shows as well as from the writings.

Not knowing what a sonic screwdriver is might be a better, if different, clue, since a really advanced culture probably puts everything together with something like Velcro. (Probably based on something like the "sticky foot" structure found in gekkos and some frogs(?)) One must not assume that "torsional fasteners" are the best thing they'd have elsewhere.

John

Subject: RE: BS: How to ID a time traveler
From: Slag
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 04:45 AM

This reminds me of the movie "The Greatest Story Ever Told". They were nailing Christ to the cross and when he opened his mouth to cry out you could see his fillings! That or he had just had a particularly sticky date bar after his trial.