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