Social media followers are sure a man in a rumpled brown suit can be observed staring at what appears to be a cellular phone in the wartime picture from Towan Beach Share Article Share Article Facebook X LinkedIn Reddit Bluesky Email Copy Link Link copied Bookmark
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Keen-eyed social media viewers are convinced that a time traveler has materialized in a 1940s coastal photograph.
The individual in a disordered brown suit is plainly visible in the middle of the wartime image, apparently looking intently at something resembling a cellular telephone.
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Around him are numerous sun-loving vacationers relishing the last of the summer sunlight in September 1943.
The picture was taken at Towan Beach, Cornwall, and disseminated online by Stuart Humphrys, who initially neglected to spot the obvious time-bending character.
He penned: “British war employees escape to the seaside – this Cornish beach was photographed in September 1943.
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“(It would be lovely if one of you were able to identify which beach!)”
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However, as soon as he posted the seaside image, X users promptly pointed out a particularly strange detail amidst the rolled-up pants, panama hats and deckchairs.
Misjudging the year, South London History answered: “Er…is it just me or is this guy checking his phone…..in the 1950s?”
Dr Kevin Purcell chimed in: “Good catch. It’s clearly the man in the shot is a time travelling tourist checking his mobile device.
“Finally the evidence we need that time travel is real.
“We now see things in old photos that we missed before but now we know they’re phones now that we have them.”
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Gerald Jackson offered: “Shows how much beachwear has changed!
“Jacket, tie and hat? Mind they did that when I was a kid in the 50s.”
Yet Mr Humphrys stayed skeptical, saying: “I think that chap is rolling a cigarette!” It’s not the premiere occasion that observant photography fans have discovered strangely modern gizmos in aged, grainy photos and film material.
In 2010, a cellular phone operator was seen in an ancient Charlie Chaplin film, prompting viewers to name them a time traveler.
George Clarke, a filmmaker from Belfast, remarked on the odd sight and uploaded the video to YouTube.
The video presents a brief fragment from DVD extras included with Chaplin’s 1928 silent movie The Circus. However, upon tighter observation, it seems a woman passes by chatting into a phone held to her ear.
Some afterward proposed it was a portable hearing device, though this appears unlikely.
Over 80 years past, Umberto Romano painted ‘Mr Pynchon and the Setting of Springfield’, which depicts a 17th century gathering between native Americans and English inhabitants in Massachusetts.
Yet it also seems to present a man, bare from the waist up, holding a flip phone.
Furthermore, Apple CEO Tim Cook once admitted to observing an iPhone in a 347 year old artwork by Pieter de Hooch titled “Man Hands a Letter to a Woman in a Hall.”
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Cook scrutinized the Dutch master’s piece at a museum in Amsterdam and was astonished.
He articulated in a dialogue, “I always thought I knew when the iPhone was invented, but now I’m not so sure anymore.”