Titor Device (Caroline Era)

The Titor Device is a mysterious artifact found on a burglar some time in 2002. There has been much speculation regarding its origin, function and current location.

History
At some point in 2002, a man giving his name as John Titor was arrested attempting to steal a computer from the IBM museum. On being searched, a small electronic device was found on his person which appeared to serve a variety of functions, the primary one apparently being voice communication by a radio network. The individual concerned was later interviewed by military intelligence and the incident was hushed up. On being moved to another location in New York State, he managed to escape from the vehicle. A person answering his description was seen a few hours later in the hamlet of Montauk near the Air Force Station, scaling a lighthouse. He fell from the lighthouse, but allegedly disappeared in a flash of blue light before hitting the ground. It is not known if the device was in his possession at the time of the disappearance but the general consensus is that it was not because of information available on its composition and nature.

The incident came to light recently due to a security blunder.

Description
The device is described in "Mr Titor"'s address notes as a "calculator". Although it bore a superficial resemblance to such a device and included that functionality, that does not seem to have been its primary purpose. It was about 7 cm in length, made primarily of plastic and featured a small flat colour display, a piezoelectric speaker and microphone, a numeric keypad, a microwave aerial and some kind of electronic camera. It was found to be able to broadcast signals in the microwave range at low power. There was also some kind of battery in a compartment on the back which was unexpectedly primitive, draining fast, unable to hold much power and based on lithium ion technology. The word "NOKIA" was printed under the screen. Before its incorporation into the Warsaw Pact, there was a company in Finland known as Nokia which used to provide wireless communication devices for the Finnish Defence Forces.

It was also found that the device contained a number of unusual elements not widely available outside currently inaccessible parts of Africa such as tantalum and indium.

On being turned on, the device appeared to contain an advanced digital computer which controlled the display and enabled the user to interact with it via the keypad. However, there was no "switch" as such and the device seemed to be constantly powered up, which was again at odds with the apparent nature of the battery technology. A number of very advanced software applications were available on the device which seemed to load instantly, including a word processor, a program apparently designed to communicate with some kind of radio network and able to send short text strings using mixed upper and lower case characters, a calculator, a means of taking colour photographs and storing them and a mysterious program referred to as a "browser". Using present-day terrestrial technology, the facilities available on the device would have required several supercomputers working in tandem, but it was somehow provided within a handheld artifact.