Is it possible to photograph a time-traveling hipster?
Since at least 2010, a photograph allegedly depicting a “time-traveling hipster” has been circulating on the Internet:
Although the image in question is genuine and unaltered, the man in the picture who has been singled out for his allegedly odd appearance is not a time traveler.
The image was originally made public in 2004 when it was included in the show “Their Past Lives Here” at the Barlorne-Pioneer Museum.
When the museum scanned and posted online the collection that contained this shot in 2010, various Internet users noticed that a man in the photograph appeared to be dressed far too modern for 1940:
Fark, BoingBoing, and Forgetomori all picked up on the phenomenon and reposted the photograph with headlines like “Time traveler captured in 1940 photo?”
The notion that the man in the shot is a time traveler is supported by three objects he is seen wearing or holding that appear too modern for the 1940s: a logo t-shirt, a small portable camera, and wrap-around sunglasses. All of those products, however, were easily available in the 1940s.
His t-shirt, for example, features the emblem of the Montreal Maroons, a historically accurate hockey team that competed in the NHL from 1924 to 1938:
In the 1940s, glasses with side shields were also available. While this form of eyewear was not yet common, it is more likely that the snapshot depicts a man of his day with an uncommon fashion sense rather than a time traveler:
Kodak provides the final nail in this time traveler’s coffin. While many viewers felt that the camera seen in the video was simply too small to exist in the 1940s, Kodak did manufacture many portable cameras that were available in 1941, including the following:
At first sight, the man in the snapshot appears out of place, but nothing about his appearance was implausible at the time the photograph was taken.
