A strange 1938 video of a woman speaking on the 'cellphone' has people convinced about time travel
The concept of time travel has always fascinated people. Much like aliens and UFOs, over the years, pictures and videos hinting at time travelers have both excited and terrified the internet. One such resurfaced video that recently made the rounds on social media, featured a woman using a mobile phone—decades before they were even invented. Convinced this proves the existence of time travel, conspiracy theorists are sounding alarms. The video, which was posted on YouTube by Leominster Access Television, is from a 1938 documentary. It shows a woman walking through the crowd while speaking into a device that resembles a modern phone.
The video captioned, "Time Traveler in 1938 film caught talking on a cell phone...coming out of a Dupont Factory in Massachusetts," earned millions of views and prompted a flurry of reactions. On YouTube, a person baffled, remarked, "How can you use a mobile phone in the past? Without a network...satellites or transmitters did not exist at that time." In response, a netizen penned, "This video is cool. She can time travel by making wireless calls while everyone else only has home phones. That's really smart."
As the comments poured in, another chimed, "Wow. Not only time traveling but cell phones that communicate with cell towers that will not exist for 70 years. That's amazing." Things grew even more bizarre when a YouTuber claimed the woman in the said footage was their great-grandmother Gertrude Jones and that she was in fact using a mobile phone. As reported by The Mirror, the person explained that the device was a prototype wireless phone, supposedly developed as an experiment by industrial giant Dupont at their factory in Leominster, Massachusetts.
He added, "She was 17 years old. I asked her about this video, and she remembers it quite clearly. She says Dupont [the company that reportedly owns the factory in the video] had a telephone communications section in the factory. They were experimenting with wireless telephones." As reported by HuffPost, he continued, "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."
As folks on the internet questioned why such a groundbreaking device remained virtually unnoticed for so many years, the grandchild speculated that the technology might have been deemed too advanced for its time and was ultimately abandoned. He explained that ideas are born, prototypes are built, and sometimes, like this phone, they fade into obscurity—until an old film resurfaces. The device the woman was using closely resembled a walkie-talkie which was developed by Canadian inventor Don Hings around the time in 1937, as reported by Scoop Upworthy.