TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Bonds With Spy Tech Part Two

and realistic. Let's take a listen. So supposedly John D, the sixteenth century science guy Dr John D, may have been the first double O seven to perform espionage in the royal service. He served as an advisor to the Queen and reportedly signed his messages with two zero's symbolizing his job as the Queen's eyes um, followed by a seven with the top drawn out over the zeros that the number seven reportedly having some kind of occult meaning

to d Um. So his code name, if you will, was double O seven Yeah, and that you can uh find. And we actually have an article all about James Bond at How Stuff Works. You can learn more about the background and the supposed mythology behind it. By the way, I've got another trivia tidbit about Dr John D. Yeah. Did you know that? According to HP Lovecraft, Dr John D was the man responsible for translating the Necronomicon into English, although that translation was never found I did not. Okay,

so let's jump into the James Bond series. Now, when we last we left off, we had worked our way up to Moonraker, the nineteen seventy nine film, and yes we are in the middle of Roger Moore's um the best James Bond ever. As I mentioned in the last one, George lazenby close second Roger Moore, Man, you can I could just hear the frustrated squeals of of James Bond fans everywhere placed Timothy Dalton, just just trying not to kill you with their minds. Oh it's fine, it's fine.

Uh yeah. So Moonraker head, this was the era where the Roger Moore era, where the gadgets really started going crazy. Yeah. We keep in mind Lauren and I met before we came in to record this, where we cut a bunch of gadgets because we just for time. There's just too many. And in this particular era alone, I think like sixty of our cuts came from these, right, So starting off, we have a wrist dart gun with poison tipped darts are also armor piercing darts, so we had two different types.

And there are lots of electronic dart guns that have been created over the past, including a well there's one that was not even this was an electric It was actually a bullet one. It was a gun gun. There was a glove mounted gun, so the barrel of gun was actually on the palm side, and it was designed so that when you would make a fist and punch something, the gun which the barrel would hopefu clear your knuckles,

would fire off. And the idea being that it was developed in World War two by the OSS and the idea is that, you know, if you were to create the sort of thing and show a person punching someone else and the other person dies as a result of being punched, it would scare the heck out of your enemies, like, wow, they are so strong. But here's the thing didn't work so well, so hardly anyone ever fired one of these things.

There are some interesting pictures online of the various gun gloves. Uh. So there have been people who have tried to make this kind of technology work, but no one's really done it in such a way that it was ever practical. So risk dart gun not necessarily practical. There's probably other ways you could, you know, someone's life starts out other kind of impractical thing. A cigarette case with an X

ray safe cracking device. Yeah, I'm not sure how you would fit X ray scanning technology into the form factor of a cigarette case. That sounds impossible. It sounds pretty hard to me. Yeah, also had a wristwatch. There are a lot of wristwatches in James Bond. That's one of the things that we ended up cutting some of them because there's so many. They were like, yeah, we we've already.

But anyway, this particular wristwatch had a detonator refused and an explosive charge built into it, which, again, that's a lot of stuff to pack into a tiny form factor. Now I can totally understand a detonator in a watch. A transmitter, that's something that I could, you know, especially once you get into the transistor era, and we're well into it now in nine. Transistors are definitely a thing. When you get into that mantorization where you press a

button and it sends out a radio signal. I totally get that, but being able to build in all this other stuff so that it can contain everything is a little on the science fiction side. Yeah, that's that's dicey in terms of physics. There was also something showing off in queues laboratory that disturbed me. Are you are you talking about the Mexican machine gun. Yeah, the Mexican machine gun.

It's so this is problematic, so that while showing what, you know, a lot of the scenes show que walking through the laboratory and some outlandishly ridiculous gadget is going off in the background. Yeah, just completely without comment, just that's just happening. Occasionally they might stop, Oh have you seen this double O seven. It's a Mexican machine gun and it looks like a well, it looks like a mannequin.

It is a mannequin of a person wearing like a sombrero and taking a cs to like like a troubling lye racist mannequin. Yeah, and then the chest opens up, revealing a machine gun that fires off. So yeah, that was a little problematic. And then there, of course, is the character of Holly Goodhead, who had lots of gadgets. She was a CIA agent in Moonraker, and she had her own weapons, which included a pen, a notebook, and perfume. It was a poison pen, it was, it was a

dart shooting note back. All women, it was flamethrower, perfume. Every I'm sure you have some at your desk. It's probably pink too, because we all know what ladies like, right, yeah, I know. The the To be fair, the James Bond franchise has never been accused of being forward thinking as far as women are concerned. Yeah, that's that's or or race when it comes to that. No, there's some terrible examples, but we're what of course, we're constant on the gadgets,

not the not the social commentary. So moving up to one, we're still with Roger Moore. Still yeah, for your eyes only. Yeah no, it's not just for my eyes, Lauren. It was for the world's eyes. Oh you're talking about the title of the movie. Okay, yes, for your eyes on the yes, um. They introduced a computer like device called the identograph in this which was interesting. The idea was that you could create a composite picture of a person

by adding or removing distinguishing features on a computer. Yeah, so it's kind of like, no, the nose is bigger, No, no, the eyes are wider. Set that kind of thing, which is totally something we can do now. Yeah. Yeah, facial composition techniques have been in use for for decades and decades at this point, but um, I don't think that we got a digital version until the late nineteen eighties. So this is kind of again another sort of predictive technology,

but it's certainly something that has been used since. We still have you know, uh like a sketch artists who work with police departments too. But now there are also these technologies that let people uh kind of mix and match basic features where you get a general idea of what someone might look like based upon a description. Yeah,

it's it's great, uh, great artistic technology. Um. Also in this film, we had an update to the communications first watch, I think last we had kind of a ticker tape sort of thing going on, um, and this one could receive digital messages and be used like a walkie talkie, which is fantastic because it meant that Roger Moore could clear out all that extra space in his hollow arm

for the battery that would be necessary to run this device. Um, you know, for those who don't get that joke, you need to listen to the other podcast, the other episode. Of course, these days that's totally a thing we have in pockets all the time. But but yes, at the time, it was still a little bit forward thinking. We wouldn't start to get wrist watches with that kind of capacity

until the late eighties at the very earliest. And of course we you know, we've talked all about smart watches in previous episodes, including the most famous one, the Dick Tracy wrist radio, and there have been lots of people who have created various kinds of of watches that were also communicators. But now we're finally getting into the era where they aren't super bulky or have you know, no battery life whatsoever. So definitely a little ahead of its

time there, but supposed to be. Moving on to the next. Roger Moore film, nineteen eight three's Octopusy, which I saw in a drive in movie theater. I remember distinctly going to see this movie and thinking, even as a kid, in three same year that Return of the Jedi came out, even as a kid, thinking this is silly. It's this I would I would argue that Octopusy is these silliest

of the James Bond. But it certainly had some of the silliest examples of technology and and uh camouflage, with the possible exception of a car that we'll talk about towards the end of this episode. But for one thing, they had the wristwatch and pen combo that this part wasn't so silly. The idea was that the pen had surveillance technology like a microphone in it that you would surreptitiously leave someplace and then you could pick up the transmission on the wristwatch and listen in on what was

going on. Not that crazy an idea actually, so I kind of get that one. Also, the pen had some nitric and hydrochloric acid in it that could clearly dissolve stuff, because occasionally you have to dissolve a bad guy's face, you know, and you might have the ark of the Covenant in your use. Uh. So, then there was a weapon that one of the nameless henchman in this movie used. There was a buzz saw slash yo yo type thing. Well, I mean it was I don't think that was intended

to be a yo yo. I think it was purely for for weapon purposes. I don't think that the bad guy was trying to trick anyone with it. It wasn't trying to walk the dog or it wasn't. I mean, it was a buzz saw that had yo yo functionality. Yeah, so the they thought ahead a little bit. So the there was like a handpiece this guy wore where he could hold the blade like a saw blade, you know, and like a saw blade that's on a cable. But uh, and he was the guy who was using it was

mostly using it from above. He was on a level higher up than where James Bond was. He could kind of throw it down and have it come back into your hand right and it would spin on the end of its ropes, sort of like a yo yo would if you if you did not sleep. I just you know, it's it's called sleeping. But it could cut through like all this stuff, Like it cuts through a table that's got like a big fruit plate on it, because you

know that's visually interesting. Um. And truth is, unless there was a motor that was turning that saw blade, that just wouldn't work because as soon as it made contact with something solid, it would start to lose velocity, so it might it might embed in something. Sure, you could probably get it to injure a person. Pretty sure, Pretty well, sure. I just wouldn't continue to cut. It wouldn't continue to

rotate and cut, so that's not realistic. In fact, a larger version of this sort of thing was used in a later James Bond film, but on an industrial level, where it was supposed to be something meant to cut down trees and ends up cutting James Bond's car in half. Unlikely. Yeah, Um, something that was more likely was a TV watch. Um, but Bond had a had a color TV display embedded in a in a wrist watch. Um, have you seen any pictures of this thing? I'll tell you what. All

the pictures online of this thing. The still image that they picked, which which one woman's cleavage shocking. I'm shocked, every single one. By the way, if you're going out there rushing to look at Google image starch right now after I said that for shame. But I was just it was one of those things where I was looking at pictures of these different gadgets because some of them

I was unfamiliar with. I haven't seen all the Bond films, so I was like, I need to see a picture of or perhaps it's been a while in many cases, right right, And then like, I have no memory of this TV watch even though I remember watching Octopussy and uh, and so I looked it up and was like, oh, really, at Saco had actually come out with a two color

TV watch the previous year, so so that was totally legit. Almost. Yeah, it was a little bit smaller than what you would expect in it had a little bit color, the color was better, but but it was still online with the sort of stuff that was coming out, you know, and you expect that whatever James Bond has is bleeding edge technology. Yes, other bleeding edge technology. And my two favorite from this film, which are probably my two favorite of any James Bond

film ever in terms of pure ridiculous factor. Yeah, we've got We've got the fake horse. Yeah, there's a horse trailer with a fake horse, and the back end of the fake horse lifts up and James Bond pulls out a miniature aircraft that was hidden inside the horse and horse trailer. So you've got this camouflaged trailer like it could have just been a trailer. Why did it to be a horse trailer with a fake horse and at that's hiding a gyrocopter. That is a question for the ages, Jonathan,

I'm not answer. I would say that this is the dumbest thing that happens in Octopus E except for one other thing, except for the fact that there's a crocodile shaped motor boat. Yeah, there's a crocodile shaped It's it's incredible to me that that multiple people in a movie studio said this is a great plan. Let us enact it. This is a and this continues to be terrific, let us go ahead with it. Not that's not only that, but someone paid for that crocodile shaped motor boat. Prop

paid a lot. There might have been multiple ones that they had to decide which one of these is the best crocodile shaped boat prop. Oh Man, So let's move on. Things do improve in a way. We we get never say Never again in with a Return of Sean Connery. Now, this was a film that was not made by the same studio that was making all the other James Bond films. So some people don't include it, some people do. We're including it because why not. It's actually kind of a

based on the same story as a Thunderball was. So if you remember in our last episode, Connery was in Thunderball too, So essentially he's he's making two remake of his own movie in a way. So in this one, he had a pen that had an explosive charge in it that was meant to fire a projectile, which you could do, and we talked about the lipstick and cigarette one shot pistols in the past. Obviously you couldn't make

it be a pen pen like. It couldn't be made out of the same stuff as your regular pen, because that wouldn't hold up under the stress of your hand. Yeah, that would be bad. That's what we call a bad result. But technically it is possible. H And another, I thought I'd pull up another kind of funky spy gun. I like to bring up real life examples whenever we talk about these fictional ones. There actually was this cell phone, um that what looks like it dates from the early nineties.

It is a big, clunky, candy bar style cell phone, all right, But if you were to uh to bisect it so the top half comes away from the bottom half, you would see that there are four bullets that can be in this thing, and it can actually fire bullets. When you put in a four digit code in the cell phone, it fires off a bullet. Yeah. So, um, one of these was actually found in the wild. I

want to say it was in the UK. So it's kind of a kind of crazy that these things actually do exist to some extent, although I doubt that they are, you know, in wide use. It's probably one of those things that you know, when all else fails, that's something that you might rely upon that may or may not get you out of a tricky situation, unless you're James Bond, in which case it always does right because it's because

it's a plot gadget. Yeah. Um uh. That film also had I think the first example of a watch with a laser beam cutting tool, yeah, which again not realistic because you would need a lot of power to be able to create a laser of significant intensity for you to cut through anything. Now, we could have laser pointers Shara watches, in fact, I'm sure there's some watches out

there that do. But for something that could actually cut you would need a pretty significant power and that's not something that you could fit in a wrist watch form factor moving on too of you to a kill. We'll guess who's back with us, Roger Moore. So here's an interesting piece of technology that that you found an example of, at least a concept that's similar to it. One of the things James Bond has is a ring that hides

a camera in it. Now, this is also, especially in five when you're talking about film cameras, really hard to do because how do you how do you miniaturize all that stuff so it fits into a ring? Um. But on top of that, you know, now even with a digital one, it would still be tricky because again you have to worry about power, like where does the power come from? Right, news broken late that a design studio is working on a digital camera and in a ring

thing like this. They're they're calling it the camera ing. Yeah, um, but it as of right now, I haven't heard any further development about everything I looked into. Look like it was a concept, not even beyond a concept at this point, so we may never see a real one. Now, the pictures of the concept drawings make it look super cool and I totally want one. Yeah, And in fact, lots of people on on like Pinterest and fancy in places like that have been like this. This thing is terrific. Um.

But yeah, there's now the drawing is terrific. It's amazing what people can draw, isn't it? If only that thing can come real again, I don't know how you get around the power thing. You geld to have a small battery in it, but it would drain that pretty quickly, I would imagine. Anyway. They also had an electric shaver that was actually hiding eavesdropping technology, which again uh and um. And then that that iceberg boat submarine. It all depends on who you ask. Whether as a boat or a

submarine that's disguised as an iceberg, it's better than a crocodile. However, this particular iceberg boat also, as I recall, had a bed in it, and she pain I. I that, you know, iceberg shaped sub mercibles is where I keep all of my luxury items. So I'm not sure why you're questioning this. This is one of those issues that I have with

James Bond. Is just not only that he's a spy that draws unwanted attention to himself wherever he goes, but he's also like living this insane lavish lifestyle that that nobody does except for maybe Elon Musk. Maybe that's why he bought that's submercibiles. He's trying to become James Bond. Um. You know. Anyway, I just thought it was weird. So now we're moving on to the Living Daylights, where we

get a brand new Bond. Timothy Dalton, Yeah, this is Timothy Dalton was not one of the more lauded James Bonds. Less than popular at least I think Roger Moore people have a kind of fondness or campiness. Timothy Dawnon. Well, for it's not entirely his fault that Timothy Dalton movies were a little dour. You know, they weren't. There were. It seemed like a lot of fun missing from some of those Timothy Dalton and they they were, they were a little bit humorless. I so the Living Daylights, let's

talk about some of the gadgets in that. Yeah, let's see. We had a a key chain that included knockout gas to be released if you whistled the correct notes, which was rule Britannia for James Bond. Presumably each double O agent would have a different whistle que so rule Britanny. So do do do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do would release knockout gas, but it also could explode if

used a different kind of whistle. For for for James, they used a wolf whistle, which Q of course comments upon as you would expect, and it was totally appropriate for Mr misogyny James Bond. Also contained inside this key chain was a lock pick capable of opening up like n of the world's locks, according to Q, which is amazing. Um, I'm not sure that any keychain could contain all of these things and still be a key chain and not like a kit. It seems unlikely. Yeah, that that's again

one of those physics issues. How do you pack? How do you make enough room for enough knockout gas to be effective for anything, or enough explosive charge to be dangerous, and have the enough room for the lock picks as well? All three of those things into something that tiny would be really hard to do. Also, how can you make sure that when one goes off, like when the gas

is released, it doesn't accidentally also make it explode. Because knockout gas is great if you don't want to hurt people, but if you do knock out gas and then immediately the key chain explodes. Yeah that's not good. Yeah. I would assume that whatever release mechanism would would be I don't know, yeah, at any rate. Um. Then then there

was a boom box, Yes, the Ghetto Blast. As Q would say, it was meant for agents who are operating in the United States because, as we all know, by seven we all were walking around with four foot long radios perched on our shoulders. Well, it's the only thing that matched with our pants were until we were mostly looking for for sheets of cardboard upon which we would bust some moves. I would encourage you to watch the

documentary Break into Electric Boogaloo to learn more. So anyway, the Ghetto Blaster was a rocket launcher that was disguised to be a boom box. The heaviest boombox eff you would imagine for it to be an effective rocket launcher, it would probably be pretty weighty. To be fair, boom boxes were already pretty heavy back in those days, but

this would be even heavier. However, Dalton Is Bond did get a new Aston Martin, Yes, the V eight Vantage Volante, which had hug cap lasers, retractable ski retractable spikes, also a missile launcher and a rocket that would make it go. As I put in the notes, Wicked Fast also had a self destruct system, which most of the aston Martin's actual this point did too. That's one of those things come standard self destruction, you know. Not the bond ever

needed the self destruct system. Yeah. No, he was usually pretty good at wrecking those all on his own, to be fair. To be fair, I think one of his vehicles did did a self destruct when someone tried to break into it, and it was part of the anti theft device. It's a very effective one. Just a car alarm. No, that's great. That's much less annoying than alarm because it's over in a moment. It doesn't go on all morning long. Moving on to our next film, License to Kill From

I remember this one too. Uh So, this one had a plastic explosives in the form of toothpaste called Dentonite. Yeah, and I had a pack of cigarettes that were used as the detonator, So you would squeeze out the plastic the plastic and then use the the cigarettes and planted in it to be the blasting caps. So I they don't actually say what type of plastic explosives they're using. I assume it was something similar to PE four, which is what the Brits use. In the US, we use

something very similar called C four. I say we, I just mean the the entities that have access to these things personally, I don't use either. They don't give you four not anymore. So, um, yeah, these things require blasting caps. They actually can withstand impact pretty well. They can they can withstand heat pretty well, unless it's super intense explosive heat that releases very quickly, which is why you need

the blasting caps. So um, it's another one of those things where you'd have to have a very effective blasting cap technology to make this plastic explosive stuff ignite and and explode. So it's not like it's impossible, it would just be really tricky to do in that particular form factor. And then we had a few We had some camera technology in this one. Um that there was some kind of weird sniper camera gun thing, a sniper rifle disguised as a camera. But it's like a Decepticon. Yeah, uh

snipers and guys. Yes, Um, we also had it. We also had a Polaroid camera that had definitely lasers. Well, the lasers were meant to somehow create an X ray version of whatever it was you were taking a picture of. So if I had this polaroid and you were wearing a trench coat and you were laden down with various weaponry, which, guys, I gotta tell you, Lauren holds her weapons all in the open, so it's not like she would be concealing them because she doesn't feel the need to do that.

But if she did, I prefer that the nine ft long anime sword right personally, right, it's it's it's very comical to watch Lauren keep on bumping into door frames. But no, let's say that I wanted to check out and see if Lauren was in fact carrying, you know, an arsenal underneath that trench coat. Take a photo of this polaroid and it had this little red laser flash that came out of the flash instead of a regular camera flash, and the polaroid would come out with the

X ray version of whatever that picture is. Um again, not really a thing. Uh, you know, using X rays would be dangerous. Using that camera would be really dangerous on any extended So the lasers would be deadly. Yeah, and just it would just mean that you would be deadly in the sense that you would eventually probably contract contract cancer as opposed to get burned by a laser.

But yeah, it wasn't meant to be a weapon. It was meant to try and detect, you know, people smuggling and guns into places where you don't want them to have them. We'll be back with more about spy technology after this quick break. Okay, In our last James Bond film, we had Timothy Dalton, but now on our next one we go up to the next actor to play James Bond. Yeah, it would be a six year break in between these movies and the next film that came out was Golden

with Pierce Brosnan. Now Pierce Brosnan a lot of people felt was a good, um refreshing breath after Timothy Dalton. Again, I think the Timothy Dalton movies was that was more of a scripting issue than necessarily a casting one. But Pierce brosn and definitely brought in some uh uh you know, kind of an edge to the character that had sort of not been there before. It would definitely be refined later on. So Golden nye h. Besides being one of

the best Nintendo sixty four video games ever made. I'm glad that you said that, because that was going to be my really important note about this was also a great movie. Uh, he had his Aston Martin d B five again, so we're back to the Aston Martin. This one in particular, had a fax machine in the dashboard, just like any sexy, suave spy, let me fax this, um, but but more and more interestingly, cellular voice communication capacity. Yeah, this is when we're starting to see cell phones start

to get adopted in large numbers. But you know, to have like a hands free cellular voice command system inside of a car was definitely bleeding edge tech at the time.

They also had that's actually one of my favorite scenes in Gold and I. There's a ballpoint pen that Q gives to to Bond, and the pen is an actual explosive device, a grenade that had that you activate by clicking it three times, since it's a ballpoint, so if you click it three times, it activates and has a four second long fuse, and you can deactivate it by

clicking it three more times. So Q says, you know, you click it three times, click, click, click, and the four second fuse starts and goes click click click, and then James Bond takes and says, how long did you say the fuse was? Click click click, and then Q just looks at him, takes the pen back, calmly, clicks it three times and says, grow up, double O seven.

And then of course there's a little line about so they always said the pen is mightier than the swords as well, this time they're right because of me, says Q. So there are a lot of other silly gadgets shown in the background during the Q laboratory scene, like some of the silliest ones and uh, you had like an ejector seats shown off. There was the uh there was

one point where Q shows up. Actually, when Q first shows up in the scene, he's we wheeling out in the wheelchair and he's got one leg in a big plaster cast and Bond says, home, I'm sorry about your leg, and then Q demonstrates that it's actually a missile launcher, and a missile launches from the cast leg and flies about twenty feet to the right of a dummy that he was pointing toward, and then Q just casually stands up out of the wheelchair and you see that was

a false leg the whole time. Uh. And we had a request by Ian on Facebook that said that we needed to explain that, if not for the practicality, but for the sheer comedic value of that particular device. There's also one that they don't comment on, Like you were saying earlier, Lauren, there occasionally in these Q segments you just see stuff going on in the background hilarious, but

no one says anything. There's one point where you see a guy, a guy in a lapka walk into a phone booth and then only the phone booth just fills up with a big inflated balloon, trapping the guy against the door, and because the door pulls in on phone booth, he can't get out, and you just see him squished up against the glass, and that is hilarious. Also doesn't play any other part in the movie whatsoever. Uh. That starts to feel like it belongs more and get smart

than on James. Yeah, some of these, some of these around this era started to seem like parodies of I mean even even more. At least they were being self aware because I feel like the stuff that was going on in Roger Morris time was straightforwardly like it was just It's great. It was just camp the way the old Batman series was camp. So we move on to tomorrow Never Dies that film again with Pierce Browsnon. Yep.

They had a mobile phone that could act as a fingerprint scanner and as we've all mentioned, yeah, iPhone five S does that now, so we actually have technology that could do this that you know, we could easily adapt that. In fact, I'm sure there are law enforcement agencies that have adapted that technology to work in the field. Um.

It also contained a lock pick in the antenna. It was an electronic lock pick, and you could put the lock pick in a lock and you press a key on the phone it would cause it to pick a lock automatically. And it also was um uh twenty volts stunned gun, so you could zap people if they wanted to run up your minutes. And it could do one other thing. It was a remote control. It was a remote control for Bonds BMW first of all BMW car. Yeah,

I was a little bit irked by that too. Um. But but the part where it was a remote control that you know, could could let the car locate Bond and drive itself to him is technology that people are very much working on right now. Yeah, we've talked about autonomous cars in the past. This is truly an autonomous car that could you know, it could identify the signal where Bond was and then plan out a route and

drive to him. Obviously going in a straight line would not necessary only work if there were say, you know, lakes or buildings or something in the way. So it actually has to be able to navigate right and and as that kind of technology gets better, I we were not quite there yet except an extreme prototype phase. But yeah, but yeah, Stephen on Facebook requested that one. So also this was you know, we weren't the only ones who got a little miffed about the Aston Martin going away

and the BMW coming in. That ended up being a kind of a sticking point for a few people. BMW would stick around for a little bit, but uh, don't worry. If you guys love your British cars, you'll you'll get

pay off a little bit later. There was also a bad guy who had a wrist band grappling hook, so it was something that you could fire from the wrist band had a little python or piton if you're British that would fly out and embed into something, and it had a high tension strength wire connected to it so you could swing on it or climb In this case it was a character who could uh use it to run down a vertical surface. Uh, you know, because that's happened.

That happened and Bond movies. Um, It's one of those things that I questioned the legitimacy of only from the sense of we could make a wrist mounted device that could fire something, in fact, fire something hard enough to to hurt or kill somebody, certainly, but to fire something so hard that it embeds in a very tough material like stone and his high tensile enough that you could

furthermore climb up. That's a lot of down as the case maybe exactly because I mean, not only does it have to be strong enough to to penetrate, right, it has to be strong enough to carry the weight of the line. Like. That's a lot of that's a lot of stuff you've got to figure out so that this thing will work the way it's supposed to wear. The same problem I have with some of Batman's stuff. I

think that's a different podcast. I think I think we should that is a different podcast probably will do something. I think that we should call whoever created that and be like, so we have the space elevator idea that we're trying to work. Yeah, so if you've got enough of that wire that apparently is incredibly strong, let's use it for something else. Let's talk about that that moves on. Who The world is not enough? Which is I recall is James Bond's family motto? Was it? Yeah, the world

is not enough. That's that's the Bond family crest. If I'm if I'm not mistaken, I could be. I'm totally speaking from memory here. It was made another pierced brass and in film, all right, we had yet another wrist watch with the grappling hook. And and if they also had eyeglasses that incorporate X ray technology, so you could look at people and turn on the X rayspects and they were X rayspects where you could actually see if someone was carrying a gun. I'm sure Bond also used

it for other purposes. I feel like that's likely. Um. And of course, again miniaturization of the technology is an issue. And also the whole cancer thing where radiation is radiation, Yeah, it's it's ionizing radiation, which means that it's not good for us to be around non ionizing that's okay for the most part, I think not okay. Yeah, However, there are some infrared glasses that exist and can be used

for for similar nifty stuff. Just this era of vascular imaging goggles were released that can help medical professionals like locate a vein for for blood samples or etcetera. Pretty awesome, Which is pretty awesome. Um and and of course we've got photon cameras that can help us see around corners.

We talked about that in a Forred Thinking episode about how it measures the time it takes for light to come back around, Like a portion of the light hits an open doorway and goes into a room, and some of that light gets reflected back, hits the doorway again gets reflected back toward the camera, and by measuring the the amount of time those individual photons took to go out and come back, a camera can actually reconstruct what is inside the room next door without having a clear

line of sight inside it, which is crazy, but it's real. It's not X ray glasses. It's never going to be X ray glasses. I don't. Yeah, but I saw on the back of this comic book is guys holding up his hand. He's got this crazy he looked on his face looks like Drew Carey. However, things that I think are definitely up and coming um bagpipes that can hold machine guns and flamethrowers. Look, aren't bagpipes deadly enough already? Do we really need to add more killing power to bagpipes?

It up with q okay or should I say? Ah? Yeah? That was another one of those things seen in Queues lab as, this guy with a set of bagpipes that turn into a machine gun in flamethrower, because you know, that's that's exactly what we need, are more highlanders with high high caliber weapons, all right. They also this was also one of those things that when I saw it, I was like, this is this is hilarious, And yet there's a real world technology that's similar to what was

shown on the screen. So James Bond's wearing the ski jacket. There's this whole chase scene where he's driving what's essentially a snowmobile with a parachute and a fan on the back of it so that can fly in places, and he's being chased by bad guys who are also on these things. And then he and a lady are on this this icy area where uh and the spot above them is breaking apart. It's gonna cause like a little avalanche.

It's going to crush them in a second. And so quickly James Bond grabs the lady and uh the and hits something on his jacket which inflates this ball around them. So they get surrounded by this big inflatable ball and uh and sort of like a zorb, one of those big inflat and ones that you could run around inside, similar to that yeah, yeah, big inflat hamster ball, and that ends up providing shelter when everything falls on top of them so that they don't get crushed by the

snow and ice that falls. Um. And at first, when you look at this, you're like, oh, come on, that's just so silly. However, it's actually kind of similar. There's this, um this cool yeah just announced this year. I think there's this inflatable helmet. Yeah, it looks like it's uh,

this kind of bulky scarf that you would wear. Uh, it's the hole ding and it's uh, it's an air bag for cyclists and the idea is that it has this inflatable helmet that can expand rapidly if it detects a sudden change in your acceleration and cover your head in this inflatable bag, so that way, if you have a crash, your head is protected, even if you're not wearing even if you don't want to wear a standard So kind of cool, I mean in the sense that

there is technology that's being developed right now that's similar to this, this idea that was proposed in the movie. I would think that anything potentially sharp like ice might be a bad idea for something like that. Also, the

material would have to be able to withstand puncture. I also think it would it would require a lot of pressure on the inside of that that inflatable object to withstand the huge amount of weight of an avalanche like it would it would need to be mostly rigid right when it couldn't be like the bouncy bouncy castle sort of thing or just crush you. We've got more to say a spy tech, but first let's take another quick break. Moving on to Die Another Day film, um, and that

would be our last one with Pierce Brosnan. Yep. And this one, James Bond gets a ring that can emit an ultra high frequency single that is powerful enough to shutter bulletproof glass. Which okay, so materials have this resonant frequency, right that if you match the resonant frequency, it causes

the material to start to vibrate. And MythBusters did a whole thing on this where they showed, you know, the whole idea of being able to shatter a a wine glass with your voice if you're able to sing at the right note, and they showed that at the right level of uh, not not just the right frequency, but the right volume, the right intensity, you could actually make this happen. You could. Then they shot into slow motion where you could actually see the glass deforming as it

was shaking. Is really cool. However, squeezing that amount of energy into a ring is going to be difficult. Yeah, being able to project that much of volume so that you were able to shatter something like a pane of glass, because I mean, if you ever watch these videos, glass can deform a surprising amount before it breaks, a really weird,

scary amount. Yeah, when slow motion you look at you like, that doesn't even look real, So it would I certainly don't think you could pack that kind of wallop in a ring. No, I mean you could punch the glass of course, of its bulletproof, You're probably just going to break your hand. But anyway, the basic concept is sound. The execution is questionable, not so much. Yeah, the Aston Martin in this one, Um okay, So so we have basically we had an invisible car. Yeah, the Aston Martin Vanquish,

also sometimes called the Aston Martin Vanish. There's a car that, according to the film, the idea was that had lots of these little tiny cameras all around the car, and what would happen is that it would reject it would capture whatever's coming on like oncoming and projected onto the surface of the car itself. There for doing kind of an invisibility cloak sort of. The idea being that if if you're looking at the car, you're actually seeing what's on the other side of the car as opposed the

car itself. This worked for everything, not just the not just the car's body, but the wheels, the glass, the windows, the windshield, everything was was completely cloaked and when it moved, it moved like you know, like the clingon Starship and star trek right right, um, And okay, so I mean researchers and artists have in fact come up with invisibility cloaks that work on similar principles, but not at Aston Martin road speeds really and and to be fair to

James Bond, at first, when you see this, the car is not moving, it's still. But then it does start to move and it's moving perfectly fine, like you see the shimmer as it moves. But it's not like, you know, it's not like not like, it's not like the stuff on the car is lagging behind three seconds from what is actually around it, all right, right, um, right now. The best technology for this kind of thing is on the micrometer scale, you know, carbon nanotube stuff like that.

And also a lot of the stuff we think of as invisibility cloaks right now is really for bands of light that we personally cannot see. It's just that from a laboratory standpoint, certain types of light will pass through as opposed to reflecting off. It's just not in the visible spectrum. What do you yeah? And and that was a request from a couple of people on Facebook, Richard

and Monty. Now it also of course had your standard James Bond equipment objector seat, which in this film, James Bond uses to flip the car from being upside down on its hood back to being right side up. The objector seat provides the flippy flip. Yeah. Yeah, MythBusters tested part of that as part of that that episode that they did about and missed that part. I totally forgot that part of the You know, I don't think I've

ever seen Die another Day. I've seen the clips, right, I've seen the clips of this particular scene because and I just remember yelling, oh, come on, and then I had the standard you know, machine gun torpedoes right right, yeah, all that stuff that you know James Bond has he can't leave home without. So moving on, we've got uh, well, you got the boring Bond right Casino Royale with this Daniel Craig person. This this was a two thousand six films.

He's dreamy, I can't lie. So yeah, there's a new West and Martin in this one, the dbs V twelve. She also had a whole bunch of high tech, uh first aid gear that was all stored in the glove compartment. So nothing like super Crazy in this one. And a lot of this was the idea of going back to James Bond and kind of grounding the character a little bit more, making a little more gritty. Yeah. I I liked this entire recent reboot with with Daniel Craig. I thought it was a little bit it's a little bit

over odd at times, but that's okay. But and they still have cutting edge technology and in some cases cutting edge technology that outstrips what we can currently do. But that's not it's not so much a as goofy, yeah,

and it's not as usually right right. Um. One of the other bits of tech from this movie was an implanted microchip that could act as both a homing device and a like a like a biometric monitor um which also could send that info back out to m I six Yeah, which again is a little a little tricky, like how do you create a transmitter with the size of a pencil racer that can also transmit this stuff. Not that there aren't, you know, implantable technologies that that

are totally dissimilar to this. We do have things that are similar, but they work on very very short range. The idea is that's when you can actually monitor the patient in person, as opposed to when when you can kind of poke a instrument correctly at there are rather than rather than you know, miles away. Yeah, there was also a touch screen table in m I six, which you know, Microsoft had something like as of two thous an eight. Yeah, the Surface table. The you know before

there was the Surface tablet. Dear friends, there was the Microsoft Surface table, which is when when they called the tablet Microsoft Surface again. That was also when I threw my hands up in the air and said, oh, come on, I don't do it just to James Bond. I also do it to Microsoft. What I said, you already have a product called the Surface and it's a table. It's confusing. It's fun for me to write about this. You're making my articles not be relevant anymore. You got to you

got to play with one of those one of those. Yes, yeah, they had one where they was on it was on display that back then Microsoft had a presence at c Yes, they used to have a jungle booth and they had the Microsoft Surface there and you could play with it. In fact, there were a couple of different booths that

had a Microsoft Surface. I think um oh it was like Intel or something else also had one so the neat thing about the surface was had the multi touch capability, and this was before you saw that in everything, right, So it was one of those um implementations that was really cool. So this this was kind of predicting that as well. Moving on to Quantum of Solace, Craig's second

film that came out in two thousand eight. Uh So, and again we have another magical telephone in a way, so this one could create a composite photo of a subject even if Bond only got like a profile shot. So if you got a shot from the side of someone, this phone could reconstruct that person's entire face, including the side that was not facing the camera. And this this

is one of my personal pet peeves. And and it's that whole zoom and enhanced concept where I'm like, no, if the camera hasn't recorded that information, it cannot give you. The best we can do is assume that you have an incredibly symmetrical face. And therefore, if like James Bond, encounters you know, mostly supermodels, then in that universe it's actually very effective. To be fair, Lauren, James Bond does encountermodels. This is what I'm saying, you know, that's that's okay.

Never never mind where if James Bond took a picture of me and profile, however, it would you'd be like, Wow, who's that devastatingly handsome gentleman? And then you see me and like that cannot be the guy that's in this picture because that guy's nose is all crooked and stuff. I had a tough childhood. Um yeah, anyway, it was. It's not that this technology is totally beyond us, but it is one of those things where I don't I would highly suspect the reliability of any picture that is

completely created from just a portion of someone's face. Um. Now, we have seen interesting scanning technology with people using something like the Connect where they do a very slow turn and it gives a full three D scan of a person's head. But in that case, you're talking about the device that's actually getting data from all points, right, it's

not just one side all right. Then when it comes up to Skyfall, the as of right now, most recent film in the James Bond franchise that came out in and also starred Mr Craig, Mr Dreamy Craig and um and and this this film was very much as sing that kind of stripped down esthetic versus especially some of

the earlier goofy or nineteen eighties films. Um uh and and so they kind of make a bit out of it when when bonding the new queue made up for the first time, umu Q gives him this little box and all it contains is a Walter p p K and and and a little radio transmitter and and bonds

like that's it, like like not exactly Christmas, is it? However, his his gun does have a a scanner on the handle, so it only bond can fire it, all right, right, it's a little pomp print reader thing, yeah, which which which is technically possible, although it would be harder um on a on a mechanical device than it would have been on on a digital So if you have some

sort of digital safety, digitize the safety or something. If you if you make the safety completely separate from a mechanical approach and you make it an electronic approach, I could see that like if it's it's a gay aged unless the quote unquote right person is holding the gun, um, that would That's the only way I could imagine that making sense. I'll give that one to cue um and it.

Also we also see a return of the Aston Martin dB five um, like the like the super classic one with all of the super classic stuff pretty much from Goldfinger, which you know, to be fair, Skyfall had a lot of little nods to some of the earlier Bond films, like you you would actually you know, see examples of some of the stuff that appeared in earlier Bond films just kind of uh, surreptitiously hidden in the in the scene, not something that was you know, paraded out in front

of you, but that That's one of those cool things is seeing them pay homage to this rich past that James Bond has accumulated, even as they go forward and potentially go back and and recreate some of these older stories. So it's possible that we'll see some of these older stories reimagined in new form um. Some of them may just be completely written, you know, from scratch. Some of the James Bond films are not based off of any Fleming novel. But maybe some of the future ones will

be just reimagined versions of that. Yeah, and I'm really curious to see how I mean, as we keep saying, as we have been saying throughout these two episodes. Um, you know, a lot of this stuff that was crazy revolutionary sci fi tech in the nineteen sixties is stuff that's on our smartphones today. That wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff. Hope you enjoyed it. If you have suggestions for future topics of tech stuff, whether they are classic or otherwise, let me know. Send me a

message on Twitter. It's the best way to get in touch with me, and the handle you should use is text stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.