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James Bond Gadgets
whencanistop writes "Given that the new James Bond film is just about to be released, this is quite a nice summary of James Bond gadgets from past films. Tomorrow Never Dies was on telly last night and I was commenting on how the mobile phone that controlled the BMW was awesome, why they haven't done it in real life is beyond me (although there would probably be a few accidents if they ever did). Ridiculous to think that in 1963 the gadget of choice for Bond was a pager though." Of course, the best gadget in the Bond universe wasn't even 007's ... Jaws' teeth were the envy of every kid with braces.
Myth Busters build a remote controlled car every other episode (they always seem to build it from scratch... odd).
Here's a toy car retrofitted to be controlled by an iPhone: http://www.walyou.com/blog/2008/09/10/how-to-remote-control-rc-cars-using-the-iphone/
Put the two together (no problem), stick in a camera (also no problem) and you've got your own accident waiting to happen.
Why does nobody do it? Most people have enough trouble driving a car with pedals and a big wheel while sitting in the driver's seat looking out the window, never mind trying to drive it with little buttons and a tiny screen from outside.
It's cool that Bond films at least partially stick close enough to the near future that the gadgets are cool but we can look back 40 years and yawn.
What about Oddjob's razor-brimmed bowler hat? That's the one I always wanted! Mythbusters tried to make one, and managed to knock off the head of a concrete statue (with Kari throwing no less) even though it was a hollow core molded statue. Still, that hat put a new spin on the old "dressed to kill" standard!
Two words...Little Nellie! Can I have one please?
Smivs on the intertubes!
I know this because I designed/created a system to do it a few years back.
Its actually not very hard, I did this with a app on my then-new smart phone, using its internet access to connect car based computer I also gave internet access and configured to use a static host name using a dy-dns like setup on the car based computer system.
The hardest problem I had was calibration of the electronics to interface with the actual driving of the car; I never realized how much we as humans compensate for a slight directional drift on the steering wheel, or how refined our ability to break slowly is. Also, the brakes are an issue as the correct leverage for the breaks can be broken easily if you don't set it up correctly; Get it wrong and you cant actually use the car outside of the remote control because the assembly to drive it is in the way.
In general, The older the car, the more issues you will have. Also, the power and electrical systems are the picture of inadequacy if you are looking to build your own 'Kit'. I actually may try to dig out my old notes, many of my ideas for additions may be possible now.
- d
yes, yes they have had a sub-car
Rinspeed sQuba
Small autogyros are very maneuverable, have short take off/landing and are potentially a lot safer too. A small auto gyro gives reasonable speed and mileage. Landed, the rotor can be folded away quite easily and the autogyro could be easily powered by its own engine (as a simple motor trike).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Fascinating. Here's a link to the text explaining the car:
http://www.rinspeed.com/pages/cars/squba/pre-squba.htm
This is an actual car, but the Bond version remains sheer fantasy. The Rinspeed's passenger compartment is not pressurized; it's designed to let the water in. According to the above cited text:
The James Bond movie car drove fast on land, and shot wet cement onto the windscreen of a pursuing car, before driving into the sea and then firing a missile to shoot down a helicopter. This is cooler, though, because it actually exists.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The hell with Bond. I can't believe we were all so damned naive in the Sixties and Seventies. Dr. No and all those other metaphors for power-lunacy were either working for the government or the government was working for them. No difference at the top. And we, the plebes, were eating that garbage up like candy.
You have a point, but consider this. In 1960 WW2 had only been over 15 years, and that *was* all about defeating a megalomaniac bent on world domination. It's no coincidence that for the next twenty or more years so many films (Star Wars for example) followed a similar theme, as did children's cartoons - how many times did "Speed Buggy" defeat a german-sounding professor intent on ruling the world? This is how our parents' generation dealt with very real nightmare they lived through - you could argue that these films and other productions were a channeling of their collective traumas.