Top 10 Bond gadgets

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/specials/for_your_eyes_only/article3552579.ece

April 1, 2008
Top 10 Bond gadgets
The steel rimmed bowler hat used to deadly effect by Oddjob
Holden Frith

Bond treats his gadgets like his women, using them when he needs them and discarding them soon after. But despite his casual relationship with technology, 007 has come to depend on his gadgetry, and so, in time, have his movies. A Bond film without an improbably concealed weapon or ludicrous tracking device wouldn’t really be a Bond film at all. They’re hard to get right – the best are cool, dangerous and just about plausible – but some of the misfires are entertaining too. A few of them make it onto our list of top Bond gadgets:

10. TV watch (Octopussy, 1983)

The TV watch never really caught on outside science fiction, and now – with the MP3 player having replaced the watch as the portable gadget of choice – it never will. But back in 1983, when digital watches were the coolest thing going, Bond’s sleek, wrist-mounted screen looked like the future. From Russia with Love (1963) had been more successful at foreseeing the gadgetry of the future, making use of a pager, a car phone, a combined camera and voice recorder, and a watch that delivered text messages on a ticker tape. Thirty-odd years later all these gadgets would coalesce into the mobile phone.

9. Bowler hat (Goldfinger, 1964)

After the inspired futurology of From Russia With Love, Goldfinger stripped Bond of his gadgets. In a relatively low-tech film, the most memorable contraption was Oddjob’s lethal bowler hat, which could slice through flesh and bone with a flick of his wrist. This basic but brutally effective weapon barely qualifies as a gadget, but that didn’t stop Q making use of a similar principle 13 years later in The Spy Who Loved Me, when he showed off a prototype for a sharpened tea tray. It wasn’t used in the film, perhaps because afternoon tea is rarely a violent time of the day.

8. Rebreather (Thunderball, 1965)

Unusually for a Bond gadget, the Rebreather doesn’t help 007 either to kill or pull, but it does save his life (twice) and he doesn’t manage to destroy it. The silver, pen-sized device contains a four-minute supply of super-compressed air – just enough for an escape from a shark tank.

7. Weaponised bagpipes (The World is Not Enough, 1999)

Perhaps the least practical of the Bond gadgets, this instrument of violence heads a crowded field of fantastically ridiculous weapons. As if bagpipes weren’t terrifying enough without modification, Q and his backroom boys kit out a set with flamethrowers and a machinegun – perfect for tackling ceilidh-related terrorism. Fortunately for Bond’s credibility they were never used in anger.

6. Crocodile mini-submarine (Octopussy, 1983)

Probably Bond’s least dignified mode of transport, this covert submarine was effectively a hollowed-out crocodile. Less powerful and considerably less spacious than an Aston Martin, the propeller-powered sub nevertheless lets Bond sneak up on Octopussy’s island, eluding the watchmen and flesh-and-blood crocodiles that guard his lair.

5. X-ray glasses (The World is Not Enough, 1999)

Bond’s superiors are often exasperated by his tendency to use their military hardware for his own illicit purposes, but they should have guessed he’d get up to no good with a pair of X-ray specs. Long a staple of comic books and foetid adolescent fantasy, the only surprise about their appearance in the Bond films is that it didn’t come until 1999.

4. Swiss-Army surfboard (Die Another Day, 2002)

Having sneaked into North Korea on a surfboard, Bond unpacks the goodies stowed in a watertight compartment within the board. Q has thoughtfully provided him with a block of plastic explosives and detonator, a Walther P99 pistol, a communications device and a diving watch. Not bad, but as a piece of multitasking gadgetry the surfboard loses out to Bond’s briefcase in From Russia With Love (see below).

3. Virtual reality training system (Die Another Day, 2002)

An immersive, three-dimensional fight simulator. Bond hones his combat skills by fighting digitally created enemies in a virtual world – while Miss Moneypenny logs in to live out her Bond-based fantasies. The film predates the popularity of online worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, but correctly predicts that sex and fighting are going to be a big feature of them.

2. Briefcase (From Russia With Love, 1963)

Even a symbol of respectable drudgery becomes dangerously glamorous in 007’s hands. His heavily armed briefcase – the first big on-screen Bond gadget – set the pattern for future films with its blend of style and lethal weaponry. The case came equipped with a foldaway AR-7 sniper’s rifle with ammunition and sights, a knife, 50 gold sovereigns and a canister of teargas primed to explode if it was opened by anyone other than Bond.

1. Jet packs (Thunderball, 1965)

One of the few Bond gadgets that made it to commercial production, if only briefly. The device used in Thunderball was produced by Bell Aerosystems and powered by pressurised hydrogen peroxide. It was developed for the US Army so that soldiers could leap over walls and rivers, but the maximum flight time of 20 seconds proved too short. It went out of production soon after its Bond appearance, but today two companies are back in the jet-pack market. TAM sells devices that work on the same principle as the Bond jet pack for £65,000, and Jet Pack International plans to launch a rocket-powered pack capable of nine-minute flights for about £100,000. There are as yet no plans to produce the other jet pack featured in Thunderball, an underwater version that came complete with harpoon.