Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And it is Friday,
Speaker 1: which means it's time for another classic episode of text Stuff.
Speaker 1: This episode originally published on January six, two thousand and fourteen.
Speaker 1: That is the first part of a two part episode,
Speaker 1: so we'll have part two next week. But this is
Speaker 1: called text Stuff Bonds with Spy Tech Part one. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun looking back at the different types
Speaker 1: of gear that has been featured both in spy films
Speaker 1: and has actually played a part in espionage and various
Speaker 1: secret agencies. It is a fascinating subject, one that is
Speaker 1: filled with a lot of innovation, a lot of failed
Speaker 1: innovation as well. Uh. The Spy Museum in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Is absolutely fascinating to walk through if you have the time.
Speaker 1: I recommend it. Once things are safe to go out
Speaker 1: and about at museums again, and let us listen to
Speaker 1: this classic episode. This is behind the curtain. Guys. We
Speaker 1: had to go in and start deleting stuff because it
Speaker 1: was so much We're like we can't do a five
Speaker 1: part episode about James Bond. Yeah, yeah, I mean over
Speaker 1: the course. Okay. So this is a phenomenon, a global
Speaker 1: phenomenon that was based on a single n novel, Casino Royale,
Speaker 1: written by Ian Fleming, who better known as, of course,
Speaker 1: the creator of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Clearly he wrote
Speaker 1: all of the all of the James Bond novels that
Speaker 1: you know, he originally created from this Jamaican estate that
Speaker 1: he had called Golden Eye, and it all branched out
Speaker 1: from there into the beautiful goofy thing that we have today.
Speaker 1: And and there's you know, some arrows of James Bond
Speaker 1: that were significantly more goofy than others. I think the
Speaker 1: more years, the Roger Moore years in particular, guy goofy.
Speaker 1: And and because there is a lot to cover, and
Speaker 1: some of it we want to relate to actual real
Speaker 1: world technology and kind of explain which ones are realistic
Speaker 1: and which ones aren't. Because there's so much, we are
Speaker 1: going to do a two parter because it's just otherwise
Speaker 1: we would have to just pick and choose and it
Speaker 1: would be really unsatisfying at least for us. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but so yeah, a Bond himself gets most of his
Speaker 1: gear from m I six and from specifically they're Q
Speaker 1: standing for Quartermaster Branch. Yes, and so you often will
Speaker 1: find that the various UH people that Bond ends up
Speaker 1: interacting with at m I six go by a specific
Speaker 1: letter Q or M being the two big ones and
Speaker 1: UH and Q of course is the the person in
Speaker 1: charge of giving out all of the weird gadgets, and
Speaker 1: usually at some point in the rollout gives a little
Speaker 1: gives a little, you know, Bond a little kind of
Speaker 1: a slap on the wrist saying could you please stop
Speaker 1: blowing up the stuff I give you? Because all of
Speaker 1: these wonderful things. I mean, we didn't list to the
Speaker 1: number of things that we're going to talk about that
Speaker 1: he has blown up, but I mean it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that it's most of them. Yeah, yeah, he's not
Speaker 1: only not only as he blown up most of his gadgets.
Speaker 1: I think at this point he's blown up most of Europe.
Speaker 1: But no, no, that's that's that's accurate. I did want
Speaker 1: to note that Fleming himself was in the naval intelligence
Speaker 1: for the British Royal Naval Reserve in World War Two,
Speaker 1: and that It's been suggested that that because Fleming was
Speaker 1: doing a little bit of field work, you know, breaking
Speaker 1: in and entering to photograph sensitive documents that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: that that the character of James Bond was a highly
Speaker 1: romanticized version of himself. Yeah, As it turns out, the
Speaker 1: stuff that spies really do and the stuff that James
Speaker 1: Bond does are not necessarily aligned. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know that there are many spies who actually have these
Speaker 1: incredibly flashy lives that bring a lot of attention to themselves.
Speaker 1: Like I can't imagine a spy walking into a casino
Speaker 1: and winning game after game after game, drawing attention to
Speaker 1: him or herself, because that seems like it's antithetically yeah
Speaker 1: to being a spy, but at any rate. But but
Speaker 1: some of the tech that James Bond uses is actually
Speaker 1: very real world correlation. Sure, so let's start off with
Speaker 1: one of the iconic pieces of technology that James Bond
Speaker 1: depends upon in practically every movie. Now it's a little
Speaker 1: different from the novels series and the movie series, but
Speaker 1: in the movies he has a side arm, the Vaulter
Speaker 1: or Walter p p K, which is the one he
Speaker 1: carries in most of the movies. There is a point
Speaker 1: where he switches from the p p K to the
Speaker 1: P ninety nine that would be in the movie Tomorrow
Speaker 1: Never Dies and from there all the way through to
Speaker 1: Casino Royale, that's what he's using. But then it goes
Speaker 1: back to the p p K. Now p p K
Speaker 1: stands for police pistol detective model. And you might think, well,
Speaker 1: where does the K come from? It comes from the
Speaker 1: German word, which is, let's try this, okay, police, the
Speaker 1: police I pistol criminal model. Oh boy, I know I
Speaker 1: butchered that one. You're probably doing it better than I would.
Speaker 1: And and in German it is in fact pronounced Walter, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but but in British and American it's Walter dialect. What
Speaker 1: it is spelled w A L T h e R.
Speaker 1: But the Germans do not have a sound. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a hard T or or a D sometimes depending
Speaker 1: upon what part of Germany. But at any rate, so
Speaker 1: this is a very small gun, which makes sense. It
Speaker 1: has to be concealable, right, So it's a small gun.
Speaker 1: It's semi automatic, it's double action, it's pretty reliable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's often used in various law enforcement agencies throughout all
Speaker 1: of Europe. Both the the p p K and the
Speaker 1: Pine were, and so it's one of those that um
Speaker 1: you find all over the place in Europe. So it
Speaker 1: made sense, and in fact, in the novels, I think
Speaker 1: he has a barretta. Originally in the first few novels
Speaker 1: he was carrying a barretta until a fan named Geoffrey
Speaker 1: um Our Jeffrey Boothroyd, I've clearly been watching too much
Speaker 1: Game of Throne. Sorry, Um road in and recommended more
Speaker 1: appropriate weapons in ninety six, and Fleming went in and
Speaker 1: made the switch, and then furthermore honored Jeffrey by naming
Speaker 1: Q after him. The character of Q up through Um
Speaker 1: up to the point when the original actor passed away,
Speaker 1: I believe, was named Major Boy. So also, you know
Speaker 1: in in the Casino Royal Movie or Casino Royal Movie
Speaker 1: with Daniel Craig Um the Jumping Way Ahead. But in
Speaker 1: that film, apparently he is convinced to hand over his
Speaker 1: baretta to trade up to the Vaulter cute. I don't
Speaker 1: remember that because I've more or less plucked that film
Speaker 1: from my mind. I have not seen it. I know,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any of the Daniel krass Man. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed the at least I really liked the last one. Um.
Speaker 1: But we can talk about that later on. But before
Speaker 1: we get into our big list, because it is very big, um,
Speaker 1: I did want to mention that there is a a
Speaker 1: term for the kind of plot device that most of
Speaker 1: these James Bond gadgets are, because they are not just devices,
Speaker 1: they are plot devices, um. And and it's called a
Speaker 1: Chekhov gun after Russian author Anton Chekhov and his observation
Speaker 1: that and which which relates to stage play more so
Speaker 1: than movie play. But anyway, don't put a rifle on
Speaker 1: the wall unless it's going to go off, right, if
Speaker 1: you're going to if you're going to put something in
Speaker 1: a conspicuous spot that the audience sees, you cannot then
Speaker 1: deny the audience the payoff of of using that, right,
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't not use it. In fact, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of films that follow the same sort
Speaker 1: of approach. The first one that jumps to my mind
Speaker 1: Shaun of the Dead. They look at the Winchester on
Speaker 1: the wall and you know that at some point they're
Speaker 1: going to have to shoot that gun. Yeah, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was in slither by the way right. Yes, that is
Speaker 1: a good point. Yes, you can also play with this
Speaker 1: by by reversing it. Every rule is made to be broken. Yes,
Speaker 1: so let's dive in. Now. We're gonna go chronologically as
Speaker 1: far as the films go, which means we're gonna jump
Speaker 1: around a couple of different Bonds. But I'll explain a
Speaker 1: little bit of that when we hit there. So, the
Speaker 1: first James Bond film to come out was in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two and it was Dr No. And that was
Speaker 1: when you know they had our first James was shut
Speaker 1: and Connery as a as Bond. Now. Dr No is
Speaker 1: one of the movies where you see James Bond doing
Speaker 1: all of his spy stuff, but they're not really all
Speaker 1: these crazy gadgets that a lot of us associate with
Speaker 1: Bond based upon later films. Yeah. Yeah, there was like
Speaker 1: one self destructor bag in that movie, I think, and
Speaker 1: that was really the only standout tech that happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in that case, the bag, the purpose of the
Speaker 1: bag was so that it would destroy any case notes
Speaker 1: that were inside the bag, so that if Bond had
Speaker 1: been captured, those notes could be destroyed and there would
Speaker 1: be no evidence of what M I six did and
Speaker 1: did not know, So it was purely defensive in that sense.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a weapon. It was just to destroy documents.
Speaker 1: But then we move on to nineteen sixty three two
Speaker 1: From Russia with Love, and boy, we got a very
Speaker 1: earnest request from a coworker about a particular gadget that
Speaker 1: shows up in this movie. So earnest um, Robert over
Speaker 1: on Stuff to blow your mind, wrote us in on
Speaker 1: both Twitter and Tumbler, where we had we had posted
Speaker 1: a query on Twitter, Tumbler and Facebook to ask ask
Speaker 1: people to write in and tell us their favorite Bond
Speaker 1: gadget and why, And Robert responded in not one but
Speaker 1: two places. Yes, he said, you've got to talk about
Speaker 1: the briefcase and From Russia with Love. Which is interesting
Speaker 1: because this is what a lot of people think of
Speaker 1: as the first James Bond gadget. Now, first of all,
Speaker 1: inside this briefcase, James Bond carried a rifle that had
Speaker 1: an infrared scope in it. So that's pretty gadgety all
Speaker 1: by itself. But then the briefcase itself has so many
Speaker 1: hidden compartments and cool things that you immediately want one.
Speaker 1: So aside from the part that I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: the weight limitations would start to be an issue. But
Speaker 1: it's probably a little weighty. It's probably a little heavy, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you got a rifle on it, so that's that's
Speaker 1: some weight. Right. That also has at least one, if
Speaker 1: not two knives in it, right, Um tubes for ammunition. Right,
Speaker 1: So these these brass tubes that carry bullets in them.
Speaker 1: They're not they don't shoot bullets, but it's a way
Speaker 1: to carry immunition inside a place without someone seeing that
Speaker 1: you're carrying lots of ammunition. Write some some belts of
Speaker 1: gold coins. Fifty gold sovereigns is exactly how many were
Speaker 1: in that briefcase. Fifty. That's a lot of gold coin. Um.
Speaker 1: Each gold coin was well technically worth a pound sterling,
Speaker 1: but everyone used it as bullying. So then you've got
Speaker 1: the poisonous gas that's also inside the briefcase because it
Speaker 1: had that trick lid, and if it didn't know the
Speaker 1: trick to opening it, then it would go off. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, this is a this is a pretty cool thing.
Speaker 1: And in one of those I actually saw a video
Speaker 1: online of a fan who created a replica of this briefcase.
Speaker 1: Using plastic stuff for all the weapons, so like you know,
Speaker 1: a little thing bullets and plastic, but it was it
Speaker 1: was incredibly faithful to the original design. That was really amazing.
Speaker 1: I'll see if I can find that video and a
Speaker 1: link it when we put this live. Awesome. See. They
Speaker 1: also had a both a radio phone in the car
Speaker 1: and a pager for bond, right, both of which were
Speaker 1: technologies that existed at the time. But we're really only
Speaker 1: in US for like very high paid doctors, um state
Speaker 1: officials kind of stuff like that. Pages have only been
Speaker 1: around for a little while, maybe maybe about five years
Speaker 1: when when that came out, so it was still a
Speaker 1: very new thing to most people. They also used a
Speaker 1: bug detector. Now this was not the only time that
Speaker 1: a bug detector is shown in a Jay's Bond film,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to cover all of them, just
Speaker 1: to say that this is very much spy tech. This
Speaker 1: is you know, when you can put something that's designed
Speaker 1: to get a surveillance from a specific area, whether it's
Speaker 1: a microphone or a camera or whatever. Bug detectors are
Speaker 1: a real thing. They detect different stuff, like you might
Speaker 1: have an e m F detector looking for electromagnetic fields,
Speaker 1: you might have a broad band radio scanner to pick
Speaker 1: up any radio signations. So this is totally something that
Speaker 1: happens in spy business, happening for for I'd say since
Speaker 1: at least World War two. Yeah, and and and in
Speaker 1: fact you'll you'll hear us. In fact, I'm sure we've
Speaker 1: talked about it. Perhaps it was in UH. I think
Speaker 1: it was our skunk Works episode where we talked about
Speaker 1: how Locke and Barton would have these meetings with the
Speaker 1: government and they would actually sweep the room for bugs
Speaker 1: in a hotel. You know, it would be a hotel
Speaker 1: that no one knew what the location was going to
Speaker 1: be until it happened, and so this is stuff that
Speaker 1: happens today all the time. Um. Then they had a
Speaker 1: special camera that hid a tape recorder inside of it
Speaker 1: so that Bond could uh could clandestinely records. It's funny
Speaker 1: because now our phones do this. They have both the
Speaker 1: you know, you can get an app that let's you
Speaker 1: record stuff, you can take pictures. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the technology back then was, you know, like, let's combine
Speaker 1: these two crazy things to make another even more crazy thing.
Speaker 1: And tonight we have it and a lot of sci
Speaker 1: fi style miniaturization was going on in these films too.
Speaker 1: You know, at the time, the idea of a tape
Speaker 1: recorder that could fit into it a camera was pretty wild,
Speaker 1: especially to consumers for whom a tracks were kind of
Speaker 1: the new big thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you're looking
Speaker 1: at the regular reel to reel tape recorders, which were enormous,
Speaker 1: like the size of like a small television set. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are these were big pieces of equipment, So to
Speaker 1: have a manatorized version of that was pretty incredible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As for weapons, special gadget weapons, some of the bad
Speaker 1: guys had some cool ones. There was one had a
Speaker 1: shoe that had a dagger hidden inside of it, a
Speaker 1: little shootout dagger I guess, not shootout but retractable. You
Speaker 1: kind of like a switchblade for your foot, which seems
Speaker 1: like just a terrible idea of here, as clumsy as
Speaker 1: I am, I would injure myself. That's so quickly and easily.
Speaker 1: Lauren accidentally brutally stabbed herself forty seven times while walking
Speaker 1: up the stairs. I know what would happen. Then one
Speaker 1: of the bad guys had a watch watch that had
Speaker 1: a wire wrapped around the watch face. So that you
Speaker 1: could you could pull it out like like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would just it would just be long enough that you
Speaker 1: could strangle the heck out of somebody. And the bad
Speaker 1: guy tries to do that on Bond, but spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. Okay, I can't believe you just told
Speaker 1: us that. I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but uh, nothing about the garage watch was particularly like unusual.
Speaker 1: I do think that if you were going to try
Speaker 1: and hide a wire on yourself, you probably could find
Speaker 1: a better place than on your watch. I think you
Speaker 1: could easily sew it into a garment so that you
Speaker 1: could easily you know, whip it out of there or whatever,
Speaker 1: like you just had a little secret pocket or something.
Speaker 1: But hey, it's not as cinematic, so maybe that's the
Speaker 1: whole reason. Yeah. Yeah, And actually the shoe dagger thing, um,
Speaker 1: the shoes that Michael Jackson designed to do that um
Speaker 1: that deep lean, Yeah, the one in a smooth smooth
Speaker 1: criminal right, um had sort of a similar mechanism of
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, not for it didn't shoot a
Speaker 1: dagger into the stage to hold him up, but but
Speaker 1: it did shoot out a little you could you could
Speaker 1: trigger a little hitch that would that would pop down
Speaker 1: from the heels I see hook into the stage. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: oh cool. So so he wasn't doing that all on
Speaker 1: his own, no wonder. I broke my nose four times
Speaker 1: trying to do that move. Yeah, he was a professional
Speaker 1: hold patent and everything. If only a known then. So
Speaker 1: moving on in ninety four, we get one of the
Speaker 1: most famous James Bond films. That's one of the one
Speaker 1: this this is the one I always think of when
Speaker 1: I think of James Bond is gold Finger. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sean Connery is still with us, Yes, he's still the Bond.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, Connerie does some jumping around. But
Speaker 1: we'll get into him that a little bit later. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is the of course, the famous scene
Speaker 1: in this one with the big industrial laser that's slowly
Speaker 1: going to bisect James Bond um and the gold Finger says,
Speaker 1: you know, James Bons says, do you expect me to
Speaker 1: talk to this? What? No, Mr Bond, I expect you
Speaker 1: to die. It's my favorite line in all of cinema.
Speaker 1: I think way up there that one. Leave the gun,
Speaker 1: take the Cannoli. That's another big one. But there you
Speaker 1: know that's obviously not James Bond movie. So do we
Speaker 1: have industrial lasers that will bisect superspy? We have industrial
Speaker 1: lasers that could buy exact a superspy. I don't know
Speaker 1: that any have been put to that specific use. There
Speaker 1: may be some crazy villain out there who has in
Speaker 1: fact used it on a person. But we certainly have
Speaker 1: lasers that are powerful enough to do physical harm to
Speaker 1: a person at the time. I don't know that anyone
Speaker 1: to create a laser quite that powerful, but they do
Speaker 1: exist today. It's but we use them for things like
Speaker 1: cutting steel, right, like using for for cutting cutting industrial uses.
Speaker 1: I mean it's an industrial laser. Well, if it could
Speaker 1: cut steel, I'm I'm pretty sure it could cut James
Speaker 1: Bond James, Yeah, I mean the guys he does. He
Speaker 1: does have abs of steel. He is a tough dude.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from this classic episode
Speaker 1: of Tech Stuff Bonds with Spy Tech Part one in
Speaker 1: just a moment. It's a gold Finger was the premiere
Speaker 1: of of one of these iconic James Bond items. Yes,
Speaker 1: are you talking about his vehicle? His vehicle, I said,
Speaker 1: an Aston Martin Masson Martin d B five to be specific.
Speaker 1: There there are other Aston Martins that appear in the
Speaker 1: James Bond franchise, and there are also other types of cars,
Speaker 1: but I mean some of them are most of them
Speaker 1: are ones that James Bond, you know, gets borrows. Let's say,
Speaker 1: for a short while. The Aston Martin is always associated
Speaker 1: as being James Bond's car, like it's something that was
Speaker 1: heloped by Q and he drives it. I believe that
Speaker 1: they entered into some kind of like marketing agreement with
Speaker 1: the company in the nineteen sixties right around this film
Speaker 1: say and well, you know, and the Aston Martin is
Speaker 1: a luxury car company out of England. They are gorgeous cars.
Speaker 1: And the company itself for a brief while was a
Speaker 1: subsidiary of Ford Motor Company, but was that was much
Speaker 1: later than in the nineties, for for like a few years,
Speaker 1: and then it was bought back that some some uh
Speaker 1: financiers purchased most of the ownership of the company back
Speaker 1: from Ford, which now I think owns a tiny share
Speaker 1: in comparison to what it used to have. But with
Speaker 1: all of the switching around, um, has it ever had
Speaker 1: an objector seat? Uh? Yes, yes, the Acid Martin very
Speaker 1: well known lots and lots of gadgets on this thing,
Speaker 1: including the famous objector seat that is used in gold Finger.
Speaker 1: Um also machine guns behind had life. Yeah that's another
Speaker 1: big one. Tire slashing, hub caps, revolving license plates, uh,
Speaker 1: smoke and oil slick defense tools. So if you've ever
Speaker 1: played the old arcade game Spy Hunter, which had all
Speaker 1: of these sort of things and either on its car
Speaker 1: or enemy cars, it owes everything to this to this movie.
Speaker 1: Also also Mario Kart I think, I mean it didn't
Speaker 1: have any banana peals their turtle shells. No, no, I
Speaker 1: mean if only they had a couple of red turtle shells,
Speaker 1: Bond would have just sailed right through all those problems.
Speaker 1: Um that that flipping license plate thing, by the way,
Speaker 1: is a real thing in China, as if two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: Chinese police reported they were having a problem with with
Speaker 1: a lot of people installing these remote controlled plate changers
Speaker 1: that that only cost about like one four hundred bucks
Speaker 1: at the time, So that way they could they can
Speaker 1: drive under a fake license plate and then switch it
Speaker 1: over to a real one or something. Yeah, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to to avoid getting tickets. And also there was a
Speaker 1: you know the Acid Martin. Although we do identify that
Speaker 1: very strongly with Bond in the books, it was a
Speaker 1: different type of luxury car that was used in most
Speaker 1: of the novels, which were Bentley's. Yeah. Yeah, definitely for
Speaker 1: the first few. Um, I'm not sure. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if if if it's stuck with that for the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but for the first like four or five I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: certainly before they started getting upgrades to them, because again
Speaker 1: in the early books as well, they weren't so tech heavy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Uh. And Bentley, by the way, also British
Speaker 1: car companies. Not a big surprise, is there. Yeah. Also gorgeous,
Speaker 1: it's not just like oh only Eventley also about this specifically.
Speaker 1: Listener Mike Goldenberg on Twitter asked if any cars with
Speaker 1: weaponry and objector seats exist in real life, and Okay,
Speaker 1: so the MythBusters did create a car with an ejector seat.
Speaker 1: They cut a hole out of the roof of a car,
Speaker 1: they built the ejector seat, they put Buster in it.
Speaker 1: The whole rig weighed about three pounds. They calculated how
Speaker 1: much rocket power was going to be needed to eject it,
Speaker 1: and they put the rockets into the seat and they
Speaker 1: tested it and uh and Buster flew out. So everything's awesome, right,
Speaker 1: It works perfectly, aside from the part where it filled
Speaker 1: the entire cabin of the car with flames. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, it probably would burn you pretty badly. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: if you came up with some other objector method, like
Speaker 1: you had built some sort of super powerful air catapult,
Speaker 1: or if you had just a really uh strong spring
Speaker 1: that was held into place with latches that you could
Speaker 1: on latch, you might be able to eject someone from
Speaker 1: a car without filling the car also with deadly flames.
Speaker 1: But that's I'd say it's probably a bad decision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's just say that it's not something you're gonna commonly
Speaker 1: find in vehicles, and spies do not usually drive around
Speaker 1: cars that have that. It's spies, by the way, usually
Speaker 1: don't drive around incredibly flashy sports cars. Yeah, it turns
Speaker 1: out those get attention just like we're just like, you know,
Speaker 1: always winning at the casinos. So but all right, So
Speaker 1: there are other some other gadgets and gold gold finger
Speaker 1: that we should talk about. There's the homing beacons, which
Speaker 1: these are a thing. So the homing beacons and gold Finger,
Speaker 1: I think we're transmitters that they could pick up via satellite,
Speaker 1: which you know, not that unusual, I mean, other than
Speaker 1: the fact that trying to transmit a signal that can
Speaker 1: be picked up by a satellite is a little, uh,
Speaker 1: a little challenging. But you know, now today we could
Speaker 1: totally have these kind of beacons, but they'd be operating
Speaker 1: on various wireless frequencies where you might even get GPS
Speaker 1: data from a satellite, but it's not beaming information back
Speaker 1: to the satellite. Instead, it's beaming information to somewhere nearby,
Speaker 1: right right. Um, As of the year that Goldfinger came out,
Speaker 1: GPS was actively guiding US Navy ships. But um, this
Speaker 1: was called the Navy Navigation Satellite System. Instead of using
Speaker 1: GPS as we know today, it evaluated Doppler shifts in
Speaker 1: signal from satellites with precisely known orbits, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be more precise until we got into the kind of
Speaker 1: GPS that we know today in the nineties. And even then,
Speaker 1: I mean military obviously would have had access to the
Speaker 1: best of the best. It wasn't until the late nineties
Speaker 1: that we started seeing that creep into markets. Where we
Speaker 1: could make real useful um, like, we could really take
Speaker 1: advantage of GPS, because before that it wasn't so accurate
Speaker 1: that you could do like turn by turn directions. They
Speaker 1: could tell you if you were in the general area,
Speaker 1: and that was the best at any rate. Homing beacons.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are plenty of things that can give
Speaker 1: off the signal that, depending upon how far way you are,
Speaker 1: you can totally track it. So that's not that far fetched,
Speaker 1: although of course the ones that appear in the Bond
Speaker 1: movies tend to be smaller and more versatile than what
Speaker 1: you actually get in real life. And for specifically in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, it was a pretty impressive, pretty impressive feat.
Speaker 1: Oh and also since we didn't delete this one, I
Speaker 1: have to bring it up. It's not really a gadget,
Speaker 1: but it is one of the early ridiculous examples of
Speaker 1: Bond technology. Yeah, I'm talking about the the the camouflage wetsuit.
Speaker 1: What makes it camouflage? It had a rubber duck on
Speaker 1: top of it. Yeah, Bond kind of throws it away
Speaker 1: in disdain, but yes, it had. It was a wet
Speaker 1: suit with a rubber duck on it. I did not
Speaker 1: delete that from our notes, because um, I felt like
Speaker 1: it was really probably the most important of all the
Speaker 1: technology that we will be talking about. It's fair, it's fair,
Speaker 1: it's early, but it's fair. Alright, We're moving on to
Speaker 1: nineteen six. This is Thunderball. Uh there was some tech
Speaker 1: in here that was definitely a little more uh far fetched,
Speaker 1: particular from the time. Yeah, they had a homing pill,
Speaker 1: which was something that bond could swallow and it had
Speaker 1: a homing device in it. Being able to create a
Speaker 1: pill that would have a device strong enough to admit
Speaker 1: a frequency that you could pick up from any distance
Speaker 1: is problematic because where do you get the power source,
Speaker 1: which which is the problem with a lot of these
Speaker 1: very small gadgets that we're that we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about, is really the power source capacity that even
Speaker 1: today we don't fully have worked out. Yeah, we could
Speaker 1: miniaturize the electronics, but miniaturizing the power that battery technology
Speaker 1: has lagged well behind other technologies, and we all know this.
Speaker 1: It's one of the big challenges with today's electronics is
Speaker 1: that we can make incredibly powerful electronics, but often the
Speaker 1: battery has trouble keeping up with the pace. So that
Speaker 1: would have been a big issue. A lot of the
Speaker 1: sort of stuff that you think of, like that the
Speaker 1: biomechanical type pills that doctors are using today to track
Speaker 1: things in experimental clinical trials are passive, and that you're
Speaker 1: using a giants system that can track the pathway of
Speaker 1: the pill. But it's because the giant system is sending
Speaker 1: in signals that bounce off the pill, like ultrasound or
Speaker 1: something like that. So little tricky. Uh. He also has
Speaker 1: a rocket belt where he it's like a little jet
Speaker 1: pack and it allows him to escape after he kills
Speaker 1: a bad guy. And um, here's the thing. It was
Speaker 1: a real jet pack. It was actually based off of
Speaker 1: In fact, it was a bell Aero Systems rocket belt,
Speaker 1: and that was something that bell Aero Systems had developed
Speaker 1: for the U. S. Army specifically to let people do
Speaker 1: really short John. So I'm talking about like twenty feet.
Speaker 1: You couldn't go very far at all, You couldn't go
Speaker 1: very high, and you couldn't go very far. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: but it used hydrogen peroxide its fuel, which was bizarre,
Speaker 1: and later ones used other types of fuel as well,
Speaker 1: but they never were terribly useful. It was very difficult
Speaker 1: to control their expensive Uh, there was a you know,
Speaker 1: obviously there was the risk of injury, so it was
Speaker 1: never anything that was adopted widely, but still kind of
Speaker 1: a cool sci fi thing to having a Bond fail. Sure.
Speaker 1: Other personal um motion systems involved in this film included
Speaker 1: an underwater jet pack let him go through really fast? Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, the pack itself was still a little
Speaker 1: bit sci fi at the time. I mean we we
Speaker 1: we have personal diver jet packs. Yeah, well maybe not
Speaker 1: jet not jet packs, but like little you know, those
Speaker 1: little motorized assistant things that allow you to really zoom through.
Speaker 1: Yeah packs. Yeah, And we wouldn't have something quite that
Speaker 1: small until nine nine, so it wasn't that far off, right.
Speaker 1: There was a portable breather or actually an air supply
Speaker 1: is what they called it in the film, that would
Speaker 1: give just a short amount of air, like a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes worth of air that could be used either
Speaker 1: underwater or if say you were in a room filled
Speaker 1: with poisonous gas. You would actually see this in a
Speaker 1: call back in a couple of other Bond movies as
Speaker 1: well as a Star Wars movie if I'm not mistaken. Um,
Speaker 1: But anyway, it was one of those things where um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the actual spy agencies after they saw this,
Speaker 1: started asking hey does this exist, because we would totally
Speaker 1: use one of those, and it totally did not exist. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was a request, by the way, by David from Twitter,
Speaker 1: so David, we totally wanted to cover it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it kind of looked like two little CEO two
Speaker 1: canisters like you would see and if you ever saw
Speaker 1: one of those slot cars that use the CEO two
Speaker 1: as the propulsion. Yeah, yeah, it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: like a cigar container shape. Yeah, the two small ones,
Speaker 1: and then they were they were they meshed together with
Speaker 1: a little mouth piece thing that you would just hole
Speaker 1: in your mouth, and there's just no easy way of
Speaker 1: handling that, like the pressurized air, which is kind of
Speaker 1: it would it would not be pleasant. Never put your
Speaker 1: mouth on a CEO two canister, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: For one thing, you're gonna freeze yourself. For another thing,
Speaker 1: you're gonna suffocate, And for a third thing, your eyes
Speaker 1: might pop out of your head because that's a lot
Speaker 1: of it. That's a lot of gas going into you
Speaker 1: all at once. Important safety tip. Thanks Jonathan, You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Reminds me of that time when you try to draw
Speaker 1: a hole in your head. So there's also a cassette
Speaker 1: recorder hidden in a book, which is totally legit. I mean,
Speaker 1: spies like a big thing in spite. Technology is all
Speaker 1: about surveillance and hiding things in mundane objects, like hiding
Speaker 1: hiding equipment in mundane objects. So not at all a stretch. Now,
Speaker 1: although again I'm not sure if in nineteen sixty murder
Speaker 1: murd mur Um whenever that second four thank you, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that if that level of miniaturization would
Speaker 1: have been possible. Yeah. So, and also they had the
Speaker 1: skyhook system. Now this is super cool. This is the
Speaker 1: idea where James Bond has this harness and it can
Speaker 1: hook up to a line that's a tether. The other
Speaker 1: end of the tether is attached to a weather balloon.
Speaker 1: Releasing the weather balloon goes up. The balloon goes up
Speaker 1: into the air. It does not it's not enough to
Speaker 1: lift James Bond. No, but Bond can then signal a
Speaker 1: local airplane and the airplane flies by and it's got
Speaker 1: a hook on it that hooks this tether and pulls
Speaker 1: James Bond off his feet, flying up through the air.
Speaker 1: And actually in this case he's got a lady with him, um,
Speaker 1: which is not a big surprise if you watch the
Speaker 1: Jay's Bond series and you might think, well, that's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. And I've seen that in other movies too.
Speaker 1: There were you know, there are other examples. Was uh
Speaker 1: in one of the Batman films that was an example this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's because it totally exists. Yeah, this was actually
Speaker 1: invented by someone we've talked about before, Robert Edison Fulton Jr.
Speaker 1: Now if that name sounds familiar, it's because you listened
Speaker 1: to our flying Car episode where we talked about how
Speaker 1: he was one of the early inventors of a flying
Speaker 1: car that never got off the ground. Um. And at
Speaker 1: any rate, I love it when you judge yourself for puns.
Speaker 1: So he developed this particular technology for the c I A,
Speaker 1: so it was actually built for spies. So cool that
Speaker 1: it actually shows up in a movie and that it's,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty much the way it works with some
Speaker 1: some uh, they took a few liberties, but more or
Speaker 1: less it's the same concept. Then we get to you
Speaker 1: only live twice. In nineteen sixty seven, Now we got
Speaker 1: the what I called in my notes the killer cigarette thingy,
Speaker 1: I believe that was the techn Colterman. Fact. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: got a cigarette that has a projectile and it that
Speaker 1: can fire via rocket and it is accurate up to
Speaker 1: thirty yards. So I look to see if I could
Speaker 1: find anything like this. Um, there are some similar technology,
Speaker 1: has been nothing quite to the level of this. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty four, Nikolai Koklov, who was a sent
Speaker 1: by the Soviet Union at that time to assassinate a
Speaker 1: German anti communist agitator, was carrying a very interesting weapon.
Speaker 1: It was a weapon design designed to look like a
Speaker 1: cigarette case, UM, but in fact it was actually a gun.
Speaker 1: It could fire. Depending upon which account you read it,
Speaker 1: either it either fired cyanide tipped darts, cyanide bullets, or
Speaker 1: a puff of cyanide. But at any rate, UM it's mood.
Speaker 1: Kokolov decided not to assassinate the agitator. He actually turned
Speaker 1: himself into German authorities, handed the pack, the cigarette case over,
Speaker 1: the gun over and UM sought asylum, So he was
Speaker 1: essentially defecting. It was was a huge story at the time, um,
Speaker 1: Um And okay, so I mean they're there have also
Speaker 1: been single shot cigarettes, something that holds like a two
Speaker 1: caliber round that can be fired when when an operative
Speaker 1: pulls a string with his teeth. Yeah. Crazy, so so
Speaker 1: so it's realistic ish. They also he had a gyro
Speaker 1: jet rocket gun, which you might think, oh, well, there's
Speaker 1: no way this existed, Except this totally existed. It's a
Speaker 1: little handgun that could actually fire projectiles that were rockets.
Speaker 1: It's not a bullet, you know, a bullet. When you
Speaker 1: fire it, a striking pin hits the back of the cartridge,
Speaker 1: it ignites the propellant. The gases that expand push the
Speaker 1: bullet out of the barrel and it flies through and
Speaker 1: it goes towards the target. In this case, it's actually
Speaker 1: a little rocket that the rocket fuel solid rocket fuel,
Speaker 1: ignites and it takes off from the gun. Now, these
Speaker 1: were developed both by the Russians and the United States
Speaker 1: UM but never really became popular. And part of the
Speaker 1: reason was that they were not effective weapons at close
Speaker 1: range because they had very low muzzle escape velocity. Right,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't really reach full speed until they were about
Speaker 1: twenty five yards out of the gun. Right, So unless
Speaker 1: your target was twenty five yards are further away from you.
Speaker 1: The bullet was not going to strike with the full impact.
Speaker 1: And you know, you can imagine this. It's just to
Speaker 1: mention a like, instead of a bullet fired from a
Speaker 1: normal gun where it's losing velocity as soon as the
Speaker 1: as soon as it starts to exit the barrel, this
Speaker 1: is the different because it's fuel is inside the bullet itself.
Speaker 1: It's propelling forward. Um. But it was not terribly accurate.
Speaker 1: It was not good at close quarters, so I mean
Speaker 1: that that didn't mean that it was really lightweight and
Speaker 1: had no recoil, which was pretty awesome. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with some more spy technology in just a moment after
Speaker 1: this quick break. And we're back, and someone's not back
Speaker 1: with us. That would be Sean Connery. Oh yeah, because
Speaker 1: this is the first film, first James Bond film too
Speaker 1: that's officially in the James Bond Cannon that did not
Speaker 1: feature Sean Connery. Yeah. That This would be on Her
Speaker 1: Majesty's Secret Service from nineteen with George lassen By. And uh.
Speaker 1: The reason for Connery's absence was because at this point
Speaker 1: he was becoming a big film star and could demand
Speaker 1: higher salaries and so he did. Yeah, and they said
Speaker 1: we'll go with someone else. Uh So some of the
Speaker 1: gadgets in this film included radioactive lint, which actually was
Speaker 1: kind of a brilliant idea in Away. It was Linda
Speaker 1: had been irradiated that could be planted on a target's clothing,
Speaker 1: like in a pocket or something, and because of the irradiation,
Speaker 1: they would be able to track the movement of the target. Uh.
Speaker 1: They don't explain how they irradiated the it, or what
Speaker 1: kind of radiation it's giving off, or whether or not
Speaker 1: you've just doomed this person with cancer. Uh, none of
Speaker 1: that's explained. But the idea of being able to hide
Speaker 1: the tracking device in such a way that it would
Speaker 1: just naturally feel like someone's like part of someone's person yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that was what was really kind of interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: they had a safe cracker device. It was this kind
Speaker 1: of look kind of like a chord that had a
Speaker 1: little grappling thing that would grapple onto the combination dial
Speaker 1: and slowly turn the dial and start to judge through
Speaker 1: either mechanical stress or maybe even the sound of the
Speaker 1: tumblers which numbers were the most likely to be the
Speaker 1: right combination. And it takes a really long time to
Speaker 1: to work in the film, but that's that's probably fair. Um,
Speaker 1: this it was. It was one of those combination devices
Speaker 1: and it also had a document copying mechanism attached. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean clearly that's what I wanted all of my
Speaker 1: safe cracking tools. Yeah. I hear that that version it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be like a liquid tone or one,
Speaker 1: which wouldn't have been terribly useful in the field because
Speaker 1: if you tilted it then all this toxic toner liquid
Speaker 1: would come out of it. But at any rate, it
Speaker 1: was an interesting idea. Yeah. Yeah, And obviously, I mean,
Speaker 1: well maybe maybe not obviously depending on how much you've
Speaker 1: read about Xerox Corporation. That kind of tech had been
Speaker 1: patented back in the nineteen forties, but as of the
Speaker 1: end of the sixties it was still the huge office
Speaker 1: sized ones that I mean that we still have around today.
Speaker 1: It wasn't something that you could fit into not at
Speaker 1: all all right, so you all, but something you could
Speaker 1: fit in an tash a case. Was the tiny camera
Speaker 1: that Bond used. Yes, Um, it wasn't even futuristic for
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. Walter Zapp designed a sub miniature camera
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty six and helped start up the Monox
Speaker 1: company to manufacture them. Um, it was definitely in use
Speaker 1: in World War Two by spies and uh yeah, it
Speaker 1: used to film about about a quarter of the size
Speaker 1: of thirty five millimeter film. If anyone listening still remembers
Speaker 1: what they're film looks like or even what film looks like.
Speaker 1: What's also in thing is that this was originally that
Speaker 1: camera was originally made for luxury uh vacations, Like it
Speaker 1: was meant for rich people to take some put in
Speaker 1: their pocket and and ended up being that spies were like,
Speaker 1: that is something we want that one get us that one.
Speaker 1: Diamonds are Forever. So guess who's back with us now,
Speaker 1: Sean Connery. Yeah we missed him. So nineteen one diamonds
Speaker 1: are Forever. And now this one had some cool tech
Speaker 1: in it. There was a biometric fingerprint scanner in this movie,
Speaker 1: which today our iPhones have as a screen lock. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Crazy that the FBI would only start funding the development
Speaker 1: of the real tech as of like ninetive. I think
Speaker 1: the first wide use of the system was in Japan
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties by the police force over there.
Speaker 1: But so so this was this was a few years
Speaker 1: ahead of its Yeah, and it was actually predictive technology.
Speaker 1: And you know, I have a laptop at home that
Speaker 1: has the little fingerprint scanner where you can log on
Speaker 1: that way, so it's tots a thing, y'all. Also, there
Speaker 1: was a ring getting back into that, why are you
Speaker 1: grabbing so much attention for yourself? Mr bond Q gave
Speaker 1: James a ring I like to call him James a
Speaker 1: ring that that would allow him. Yeah, it will allow
Speaker 1: him to manipulate slot machines using electro magnets so that
Speaker 1: he would always win, because that's exactly what you want
Speaker 1: from a casino staff to to notice that you're anyway,
Speaker 1: I guess it was so that people would take it
Speaker 1: get attention to him, so they come to him, so
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to spend all that effort tracking them down,
Speaker 1: you know, the way that every other spy in the
Speaker 1: world has to do. If I just make a big
Speaker 1: enough nuisance of myself, they'll come to me. I just
Speaker 1: have to escape five or six unescapable death traps. And
Speaker 1: that's all good aside aside from logistic reasons, why why
Speaker 1: would this not work? Okay, so the old electro mechanical ones,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine slot machines. You mean, yeah, slot machines exactly,
Speaker 1: the old electro mechanical slot machines. I can't imagine having
Speaker 1: an electro magnet being able to stop it at a
Speaker 1: specific point. But furthermore, today slot machines are using digital
Speaker 1: circuits to determine whether you won or loss, So electro magnets,
Speaker 1: and you could probably create electro magnets strong enough to
Speaker 1: disrupt the machine. Yeah, you could probably mess up that
Speaker 1: screen real good. But but it went, it wouldn't pay out.
Speaker 1: And also you would have very large men with no
Speaker 1: necks wanting to speak with you very shortly after you
Speaker 1: pulled that kind of stuff. Um, moving on to the
Speaker 1: next film, Live and Let Die. Okay, So Sean Connery
Speaker 1: is gone and now the greatest James Bond in all
Speaker 1: of cinematic history, joins us. I'm not sure whether you're
Speaker 1: being sarcastic or not right now. And that's delicious, Roger Moore,
Speaker 1: we're talking about He's the James Bond of my childhood.
Speaker 1: He was James Bond when I was a kid growing up,
Speaker 1: so he is. I don't really think he's the best
Speaker 1: James Bond. I think I think the most of the
Speaker 1: Roger Moore films are ludicrous, but I also enjoy them
Speaker 1: for that specific feature. So Live and Let Die had
Speaker 1: a couple of different weird jets in it. There was
Speaker 1: a Rolex sub Mariner watch that had an electro magnet
Speaker 1: in it. Now, this electro magnet didn't let James Bond
Speaker 1: win it at a slot machine and let him deflect
Speaker 1: bullets in theory, although James Bond immediately says this is
Speaker 1: totally not gonna work, and you know it totally wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: You would not be able to create First of all,
Speaker 1: you would never be able to pack in enough power
Speaker 1: for an electro magnet in watch format to do anything
Speaker 1: to change the trajectory of a bullet tast moving projectile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's basically just not ever going to be
Speaker 1: Wonder Woman's wrist bracelets. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry too, because well, as long as I can still
Speaker 1: have my Lasso of Truth, that's all I really want. Then, also,
Speaker 1: the watch was capable of acting as a buzz saw,
Speaker 1: which could cut through cable, and both of these things
Speaker 1: would require so much power that again, where do you
Speaker 1: get the power? Where do you where do you fit
Speaker 1: a power source in something that's small. They could do
Speaker 1: this because if you're talking about a buzz saw, you
Speaker 1: need torque and speed to make that effective, right, So
Speaker 1: and and that's and that's a physics issue, I think,
Speaker 1: not a miniaturization issue the way that we've been talking
Speaker 1: about with Yeah. Yeah, I mean you could put a
Speaker 1: saw blade on the side of a watch face. I
Speaker 1: just can't imagine you being able to to turn it
Speaker 1: fast manually stuff with it. R. That's true that they
Speaker 1: also had a special clothing brush that hit a radio
Speaker 1: inside of it. Um, which again not a big surprise.
Speaker 1: Surveillance Again, radio transmitters that are disguised as other things,
Speaker 1: that's totally a real spy thing. Um. They had a
Speaker 1: shark gun that shot pellets that expelled air at high pressure,
Speaker 1: which would make targets explode. I I don't know how
Speaker 1: that would work this, Yeah, this is another physics issue.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think that that's how How could
Speaker 1: you create a pellet that that's small enough to be
Speaker 1: fired by a gun and yet hold enough pressurized gas
Speaker 1: so that it could blow up a target and yet
Speaker 1: not explode when you fire the gun, Like even if
Speaker 1: you were able to pack compress air that tightly into
Speaker 1: that small of a package. If it's supposed to explode
Speaker 1: upon impact or not even impact, if it's supposed to
Speaker 1: embed into a target and then explode, I just don't
Speaker 1: see how it would work. But maybe if it has,
Speaker 1: if it contains as small portal to another dimension like
Speaker 1: a wormhole, and that that dimension is just filled with
Speaker 1: highly pressurized gas, all objections are lifted. Thank you, Lauren. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there was also in that film, the Deadly Cadillac
Speaker 1: El Dorado. It fired poison darts out of its side mirrors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was one of the bad guys cars. I would
Speaker 1: like to think that that's exactly the El Dorado you
Speaker 1: would have won in Glengarry, glen Ross if you had
Speaker 1: made the most sales that month. First prizes in El
Speaker 1: Dorado that shoots poisoned darts. I um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I could use one of those in Atlanta traffic.
Speaker 1: I think I would enjoy it. I'll just remember there
Speaker 1: are places you're fired. The Man with the Golden Gun
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, still too more. Yeah, this this is
Speaker 1: the Golden Gun is one of those again, sort of
Speaker 1: those iconic things that you think about in the James
Speaker 1: Bond series if you're a fan of the full series.
Speaker 1: The Golden Gun, it was a super cool concept, and
Speaker 1: of course the bad guy in this film was such
Speaker 1: a great marksman that it didn't matter that the gun
Speaker 1: could only hold one bullet at a time you had
Speaker 1: to reload after every shot. The gun itself could be disassembled,
Speaker 1: and each part of the gun was disguised to look
Speaker 1: like something else. The guns barrel looks like it's a pen,
Speaker 1: the handle looks like it's a cigarette case, the chamber
Speaker 1: the firing chamber is a cigarette lighter, and the trigger
Speaker 1: is a cuff link. So you know, you take it
Speaker 1: all apart and suddenly it looks like regular stuff. This
Speaker 1: man of Gold also his belt buckle held bullets. That's
Speaker 1: that's both fashionable and yeah, um so this particular type
Speaker 1: of gun, I mean, obviously these parts you could in
Speaker 1: theory machine parts that look like this sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and a lot of guns are meant to be disassembled.
Speaker 1: You'd take them apart, especially if you want to clean
Speaker 1: them that kind of thing. So it's not like this
Speaker 1: is unheard of. However, you know, you wouldn't really be
Speaker 1: able to use these things, like they wouldn't have any
Speaker 1: utility outside of being a gun, because you couldn't build
Speaker 1: all that stuff in and it would be very very
Speaker 1: difficult at any rate. I can't I can't imagine. And
Speaker 1: you'd have to use materials that could withstand the pressure
Speaker 1: of a bullet, you know. I mean, you're talking about
Speaker 1: that rapidly expanding gas that propels a bullet, So whatever
Speaker 1: you're using has to be strong enough to contain that.
Speaker 1: It's actually a terrible choice for that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have to like gold plating. It couldn't be
Speaker 1: made of gold. It would be a bad, bad choice.
Speaker 1: But but even even if if this golden gun could
Speaker 1: not exist, that kind of gun that is disguised as
Speaker 1: another object, like I was talking about that that single
Speaker 1: shot cigarette gun earlier, I also saw a single shot
Speaker 1: lipstick guns that were popular with Russian spies. And also
Speaker 1: there was there's great when the both Russians and United
Speaker 1: States developed guns that were in the shape of pipes,
Speaker 1: like the kind that you smoke smoking pipes, and you
Speaker 1: would just take the little pipe stem off and with
Speaker 1: a quick twist of the pipe that shoots the one
Speaker 1: bullet and uh, yeah, it had to be really close
Speaker 1: for it to work, um, because it didn't have very
Speaker 1: good accuracy. Yeah. Yeah, I'm suddenly even even more afraid
Speaker 1: of Matt Frederick than I have been previously. It's that's understandable.
Speaker 1: So then there is the solex agitator. This was a
Speaker 1: device that was part of the doomsday machine in The
Speaker 1: Man with the Golden Gun. In this case, it was
Speaker 1: a tiny little thing that could somehow harness huge amounts
Speaker 1: of the Sun's power and then devoted to something else,
Speaker 1: whether it's for energy or say a heat ray or laser. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the soil x agitator is one of those things that
Speaker 1: I wish we had. I wish our our solar technology was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be that would be really nice. Wanted to
Speaker 1: blow stuff up, mind you, I just wanted to to
Speaker 1: provide innern Jonathan, don't don't maybe blow a few things up,
Speaker 1: all right. Then there was the a m C Metador car,
Speaker 1: which converted into a flying car with wings and jets. Uh.
Speaker 1: For more information on that, just listen to our flying
Speaker 1: car episode and we'll talk about all about how problems
Speaker 1: with flying cars. That brings us to the last movie
Speaker 1: on our our list for part one The Spy Who
Speaker 1: Loved Me that was film with Roger Moore. Yet again yep,
Speaker 1: and this one is the one that, uh that kind
Speaker 1: of inspired us to talk about this episode when when
Speaker 1: the news broke this year about a particular vehicle that's
Speaker 1: featured in this movie. Uh, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people who wrote in and said we should cover this topic.
Speaker 1: And so the Lotus Spree was the car in the
Speaker 1: film that was able to convert into a submarine. Yes,
Speaker 1: I believe this was the first time that the Lotus
Speaker 1: was used in a James Bond film, and it would
Speaker 1: continue to be their their marketing partner for the next couple. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it shows up at least one more, if not more
Speaker 1: than that. Although Lotus has never created a model that
Speaker 1: is convertible to a submarine, didn't stop Elon Musk from
Speaker 1: buying it though. He bought it and said that as
Speaker 1: a boy growing up in South Africa, it absolutely captured
Speaker 1: his imagination to see this vehicle turned into a submarine.
Speaker 1: It also had torpedoes, land mines, machine guns and missiles.
Speaker 1: It could also blast out cement that could act as
Speaker 1: either a smoke screen underwater or completely coat the wind
Speaker 1: screens of other vehicles and obscure their view. And uh
Speaker 1: so the nickname for the car is wet Nilly. Do
Speaker 1: you know how much he spent? Nine hundred nineties seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars just under one million bucks. That's a problem.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money. So that's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of money. Um, if you're Elon Musk and you've just
Speaker 1: bought a famous movie car that in the movies can
Speaker 1: convert into a submarine, but in reality cannot convert into
Speaker 1: a submarine, what do you say, Um, screw it, I'm
Speaker 1: turning this into a submarine. That's exactly what he said.
Speaker 1: He said, you know what, I am a rich man
Speaker 1: with lots and lots of of ambition. I Am going
Speaker 1: to turn this into a for real submarine, if that
Speaker 1: is at all possible. And I'm going to replace the
Speaker 1: drive train with a Tesla motor drive train, so it's
Speaker 1: going to be an electric vehicle. Um. Top Gear actually
Speaker 1: totally built out a replica Lotus and and it in
Speaker 1: fact worked underwater in that it moved under its own
Speaker 1: power and did not drown the driver for a very
Speaker 1: short period of time while it was in testing mode. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a really I'll link it on on social there's
Speaker 1: a really terrific video. There's water actually coming out of
Speaker 1: the key ignition into the cabinet. It's not a good sign.
Speaker 1: And listener Thomas on Facebook road in about this one
Speaker 1: and uh and said, well, who doesn't want to be
Speaker 1: able to change to submarine when the Californian traffic gets
Speaker 1: too stressful? I agree. So a couple of other little
Speaker 1: things that happened in this movie. There was one point
Speaker 1: where James Bond uses a ski pole that ends up
Speaker 1: being a gun that can fire multiple shots from the handle.
Speaker 1: I look at the pictures of this because I I
Speaker 1: don't remember. I mean, I've seen this movie, but it's
Speaker 1: been so long, I don't remember it this particular scene,
Speaker 1: but all the shots looked really awkward, like it would
Speaker 1: have been really hard to aim that particular gun. Skiing
Speaker 1: confuses and terrifies me to begin with, So I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a very good plan. Yeah. They also had
Speaker 1: a special Saco Courts watch that had a teletape printer.
Speaker 1: Paco another big marketing partner with the James Bond series.
Speaker 1: At this point in time, it looked like labels like
Speaker 1: a label maker. That's the kind of paper that came out.
Speaker 1: It wasn't only paper, look more like a label maker,
Speaker 1: like a little not quite ticker tape the way that
Speaker 1: it probably would have been. More like more like you
Speaker 1: know where the letters have been stamped, so they're raised
Speaker 1: up a little bit, you know, like that kind of
Speaker 1: old label makers. Even that's even more you wonder how
Speaker 1: how much paper could have watched hold and and if
Speaker 1: and if it's raised I mean, if it's actually embossed,
Speaker 1: then I mean that that requires a stamping. I mean
Speaker 1: that requires some kind of swing and purely Roger Moore's uh,
Speaker 1: left arm is hollow and has all the working technology
Speaker 1: necessary to print on this stuff. They never explored in
Speaker 1: the movies. They don't tell you about that. It's just
Speaker 1: as clear, I mean good subtext. Uh and um. Also,
Speaker 1: there's a sud agent who had a cigarette that you
Speaker 1: could blow through and stun gas would come out of it.
Speaker 1: I love that there's like just this knockout gas that
Speaker 1: apparently all it does is render you unconscious, completely harmless
Speaker 1: other than making you briefly unconscious. That wraps up part
Speaker 1: one of tech stuff bonds with spy technology, we will
Speaker 1: visit part two next week. Hope you guys enjoyed. If
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for topic session tackle on future episodes.
Speaker 1: Maybe you think I need to take another look at
Speaker 1: spy technology, maybe there's something totally different, Well let me no.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is on Twitter with
Speaker 1: the handle text stuff h s W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Y text Stuff is an
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