A clip from the late ‘30s has people wondering if time travel is real as a woman could be seen holding a supposed cell phone while walking the street. The video made it to the internet years ago and has resurfaced multiple times, evoking similar reactions from curious viewers each time.
In the one-minute video posted to Scoop View’s YouTube channel, a group of factory workers were leaving a Dupont Factory in Massachusetts, and among them was the alleged time traveler holding something to her ear and talking.
The internet reacts to woman apparently talking on cell phone in 1938
Although the black-and-white video is too blurry to conclude she was holding a cell phone, the woman did not seem to be talking to anyone else while the black device was on her ear. YouTube users took to the comments to debate what she was holding.
Someone was certain she was just holding a black pocketbook, adding that they were in style at the time. “Except she is just holding it up to her face for a few seconds while making a smiley face,” they explained. Another felt it was an AM radio like the one his great-grandfather owned. “Battery cells were nothing like the ones of today, so loudspeaker sound was very soft, hence the radio so close to the ear,” they added.
Was she really talking on a cell phone?
Decades after the footage happened, the woman’s great-grandchild, who said she was Gertrude Jones, revealed that she was holding an experimental wireless phone. Jones explained that the walkie-talkie was built by Dupont’s telecommunications section at their factory in Leominster, Massachusetts.
Jones was 17 at the time and was one of the six testers who had to use the wireless phones for a week. In the viral clip, she was speaking with one of the scientists to her right, who had another copy of the same device. True to Jones’ claims, the walkie-talkie was invented the year before by Don Hings.