Modern Marvels: James Bond's Gadgets (S8, E2) | Full Episode

they're fast sleep and sexy they're built to quietly maneuver in the shadows of covert operations or to wow audiences on the big screen theirs is a realm that lies between fact and fiction where the imaginations of gadget masters can literally save the world the gadgets of james bond next on modern marvels [Music] so [Music] [Applause] to be a good spy requires courage daring and the best toys technology can offer so it's no surprise the world of spymasters is the fodder for filmmakers real-life spy gadgets often inspire the bewildering array of props and gizmos created by magicians of the movies a celluloid version of art imitating life gadgets are so important every preview i've been to everybody i talk to and they say what gadgets you got this time everybody is madly interested in gadgets the audience loved them there was one film where we got a real audience response they really wanted more gadgets and so it's something we take into consideration hugely when we're embarking on a film that we've we've got to do these gadgets you know to keep them happy because they just love it we love it as well conversely gadgets found in films often wind up being the genesis behind real world spy technology this briefcase basically is the same theme as from russia would love spy toys can be divided into several categories cars boats guns covert spy tools and flying machines [Music] one of the best known spy gadgets used in films and television shows was the bell textron rocket belt [Music] [Applause] the belt and later versions of the flying machine are thrust driven devices that can literally make a person fly i think if i had to pick a favorite thing that is believable that i would love to have i think it's the rocket pack on the back i think that was a wonderful wonderful gadget because it was real it was futuristic and unbelievable you look at it and you think wow is that on wires and you actually realize it's for real i think that was very innovative in its day i thought it was fantastic wendell moore a bell aerospace engineer in buffalo new york created the belt in the late 1950s and early 1960s [Music] moore got the idea while working with liquid hydrogen peroxide used in the rocket boosters of high-flying research aircraft to keep them stable at stratospheric altitudes the first tests of the belt were done with pilots tethered to lines inside an airplane hangar by converting the liquid to a gas a tremendous amount of thrust was created enough thrust more realized to launch a man into the air by 1962 moore perfected the belt he made tanks that could hold up to 50 pounds of fuel he created easy to use pitch and yaw controls on the handles of the belt he installed a warning system inside the helmet to let a pilot know his fuel was running low moore's belt allowed a man to fly for up to 20 seconds at 60 miles per hour and land safely hugh neeson worked with moore in the project turns out it was all a very natural sequence if you turn this left hand you rotate it if you turn this hand you went up higher if you push both back you went forward if you lift it up you slow down so it turned out to be elegantly simple in fact i think the early criteria was have people who weren't pilots fly it the original thought was to supply this to the army to ordinary troops far out vision if you will and they did not want to constrain by saying it was so complex that you had to have a pilot [Music] in 1963 bill souter was a 19 year old neighbor of william morris who was looking for a summer job what he got was work as one of the first pilots to strap on the rocket belt the second day that i showed up i was given a low pressure try out on the tether and when they keep the fuel pressure low there's not enough power to get you off the ground but it will shove you around so you get a feel for what you're doing and the first couple attempts in the hangar are with low pressure so you can feel the reaction and what you have to do to overcome it but then when you get full pressure and your feet leave the ground everything you you thought about previously is gone it's uh as soon as your feet are off the ground and you're riding on that thing it's entirely different from anything you ever experienced [Music] suda went on to become an expert belt pilot he flew at demonstrations all over the world and was even hired to fly in the james bond film thunderball i am one lucky son of a gun i was lucky that wendell hired me and i was lucky i made it to all those 40-some foreign countries and all over the world met some incredible people it was an experience of a lifetime i guess you know that went on for 30 some years at a private airfield outside of dallas texas today's version of james bond's rocket belt takes to the skies a company called powerhouse productions owns the belt the only one in existence that still flies powerhouse owner kenny gibson has flown the belt hundreds of times in exhibitions all over the world from television shows to the super bowl i flew several years ago at the super bowl and when i landed you would have thought i just made the winning touchdown of the super bowl i mean the people came out of their seat they threw their arms up and it was just this big roar when you get face to face with them to talk about it they're just amazed that a man can fly this way even though this has been around for 35 years they're still amazed that this thing flies in the capacity that it flies in in all his flights which can reach up to 200 feet off the ground gibson said one question is asked more than all the others combined what does it feel like to fly the best thing i can come up with is it's like you would imagine flying on a magikarp but you're just cruising around really smooth and just making turns very graceful and very easy after two decades of flying the belt throughout the world at venues big and small kinney has retired [Applause] but at the powerhouse field today pilot eric scott will demonstrate how the belt works in the business of stunt flying scott is known as the rocket man the ground team makes some final adjustments to the belt then it's time for the rocket man to take a test flight scott slowly lifts off the ground and hovers for 10 seconds everything with the belt appears to be working fine after refueling scott is ready to take to the skies scott flies above a nearby tree line he makes a circle in the [Music] sky and lands at the same spot from where he took off [Music] [Laughter] i was just having a little fun out there i didn't see it oh that's kind of fun yeah it was smooth it was nice good job what's the timeline thanks everybody hey good job i love you guys 28 seconds beautiful 28 beautiful perfect even though they've seen it hundreds of times every flight for the powerhouse crew is still special you can't explain the feeling it's like a dream that's reality it's just one of those wonderful hard to explain feelings that everybody probably wishes they could have the opportunity to do to operate his gadgets the character of double07 was required to master firearms knife throwing high-speed driving scuba diving rock climbing and martial arts [Music] two hours north of london in a rolling green field just outside his country manor 85 year old ken wallace prepares to defy gravity the retired british aviator and inventor is at the controls of an auto gyro part airplane and part helicopter the autogyro was first developed by spaniard juan de la sierra in the 20s [Music] i used to ride motorbikes at full northern lots of times i love speed boat racing i love flying and airplanes but i love these things more than any other because there's no such precise way of going flying that i know and you get the feeling of flying especially when you're up in the open you feel the wind and so on it really is in my opinion the best way of all to go flying in 1967 wallace flew an autogyro named little nelly in the james bond film you only lived twice the gadget was a flying fantasy it wowed audiences and made wallace and little nelly famous throughout the world it's entirely chance the way it turned out little nelly was the chorus girl that became the star since 1961 wallace has built 19 auto gyros each with their own strength and flight characteristics well we're in the politely called hangar where i have 19 auto gyros of my design of which 18 would literally fire up and fly straight away including of course little nelly how an autogyro flies is based on simple science wallace describes it as two sycamore seeds working in unison to stay aloft we all know that the sycamore seed is a little winged seed and when it falls from the tree it whirls around and it falls much more slowly than if it were didn't have that little wing on now the autogyro i'm flying is in effect like a pair of sycamore seeds joined together at the root when you have an engine and propeller and push it along if you set the angle of the rotors so that they're tilted up at the front you can actually stay up and climb it's quite an incredible thing it works as well as it does and it feels so right when you're flying it wallace has invented all kinds of gadgets in the past 50 years but his version of the autogyro brings him the most joy [Music] i first flew my own design entirely in 1961 and i've got a heck of a lot of confidence in them since then all the machines in my shed are basically the same design but they're quite different in nature because of the nature of the engine that's used some are two seaters some are single seaters there's one fully enclosed single seater with 130 horsepower rolls-royce engine but i must confess i like the open ones rather than the fully enclosed ones he says the aircraft is the ultimate spy toy because it is small lightweight relatively quiet and can fly over an enemy undetected if you need a helicopter you've got to have a helicopter but if you want to fly low and slow and not disturb the ground or or you fly very low over crops searching for people and that sort of thing not do a scrap of damage below the water gyros are lightweight and small compared to conventional aircraft wallace said they're very safe in the 40 years wallace has been flying autogyros he's had only a handful of engine problems because the aircraft always flies in auto rotation the same dynamic used by helicopter pilots if their engines fail wallace has always landed safely i think it's one of the safest aircraft there should be to fly actually i i completely believe in them which is why i've spent so many years on them and so many variations i fly them at night i fly them with infrared line scan on board transmitting the ground all the time in military trials and exercises all weather has a landing light on it land it with its own landing light at night and of course it can taxi on the ground taxi through the woods into a critical point or something whereas a helicopter has to stand outside the woods so it's a thoroughly practical aircraft little nelly wallace's most famous autogyro has done duty in films and television shows to make the aircraft more menacing movie makers have outfitted little nelly with the battery of rockets and machine guns some of which actually fire and the wallace is proud of his autogyro's work in the entertainment field it's true accomplishments came closer to the spy game the british military and several police agencies have put a wallace autogyro to good use either spying on enemy troops or helping solve crimes this one is a prototype i made with a fully enclosed cockpit shape it has a 130 horsepower rolls-royce aero engine in it's the second prototype engine they made but it also has a pack of four aerial cameras and they were first of all used for coastal ecology research but then it led that led to the detection of buried bodies as of murder victims for the police i did over 350 flights on test work detecting where bodies were built besides finding bodies the british military has used an autogyro in the skies over europe to assist in everything from troop reconnaissance to nato training exercises it was all very real and in fact the sister of little nelly has been updated and back in military colours and she's taken part in aerial quick deployment exercises now in nato faces in bavaria and the lake constant battle area so little nelly may have been a gimmick for the film but she's also for real [Music] in the late 1970s a scottish exploration team fitted a ken wallace autogyro with infrared cameras they used the aircraft in an unsuccessful search for the loch ness monster [Music] inside an unassuming steel shed in the middle of an illinois cornfield is parked one of the most remarkable water going spy toys ever created the cue boat and the world is not enough the boat is surprised possession of the ian fleming foundation and its vice president doug redanus a lifelong bond enthusiast verdanius has agreed to take the boat to the nearby kankakee river to demonstrate its power it's only the second time the q boat named after its on-screen inventor has been in the water since it was used in the 1999 film one of the interesting things about transporting the q-boat is it's very difficult to cover we haven't had a cover made specifically for it because it's an odd shape so that tends to lead to transporting it exposed to the elements which means many times i'll look in the rear view mirror and all of a sudden have a caravan of people who recognize the boat they'll follow you into a rest area or to a filling station and want to take photographs so a journey of 25 miles pulling the cue book can take hours because people want to get their picture taken with it it's it's very though boats are a common sight on this section of the river no one here has ever seen anything like the q-boat being launched the cue boat that we have is uh the stunt version of the boat it does have what's called a complete cue dashboard in it so you're going to see all the elaborate buttons and displays it looks like the cockpit of the space shuttle an on-board computer monitors the boat's propulsion system in the film the computer was programmed to control the craft's vast array of weapons [Music] in the waters of the kankakee river the boat easily reaches speeds over 80 miles an hour the q boat actually has a 350 horsepower chevrolet v8 engine in it and it has a very simple 14 foot aluminum hull the upper deck all the special effects the shrouding and everything is all fiberglass so there's not much weight for a boat with 350 horsepower it's gas pedal fed so you drive it like a car the only thing is there's no brake pedal you have to be constantly monitoring the board in reverse but as anyone knows on the water 25 30 miles an hour is very fast this boat is capable of going three times that fast so it actually becomes quite scary when you drive this boat on the water the boat was built half a world away at london's pinewood studios under the supervision of eon productions art department and special effects coordinator chris corbolt the gadgets on it were constructed here we put in missiles they originally were guns in it which was which were never shown in the film um the jets that were coming out the back we built versions that went across the land you know for where it cut took the shortcut it was quite a mean boat actually it was uh could certainly leave your hair standing on end the waters in this part of the river are very shallow only six inches deep in some places but because of the way the q-boat was constructed with its interior engine and small hall it can easily move in extremely shallow depths besides the cue boat the archive section of doug rodanius's ian fleming foundation has collected a dozen other vehicles from the bond films there's the glastron speed boat from the 1979 film moonraker dubbed the aston martin of the waves because it had an escape parasail torpedo system and mine deployment there's the submarine from 1981's for your eyes only and the parahawk flying snowmobiles from the world is not enough but it's the collection inside rodinius's home that is most stunning he has one of the world's most extensive ensembles of spy toys and several bond gadgets on display this is the wrist dart gun from the 1979 james bond film moonraker it's supposedly activated by nerve impulse from one's nerves in the inside of their wrist james bond uses this in the office when he's given it by the q-master and he shoots a dart unknowingly into a priceless painting so it's one of those gadgets that you have to be very careful how you use it so you don't shoot the person you're shaking hands with this item is a limpet mine it's magnetic once it's activated and is attached to its intended target one has only a few moments to get away before it explodes this is a rebreather from thunderball from the 1965 james bond film it was used by double07 to escape from a shark tank he was thrown into a swimming pool which was capped off with a roof he couldn't get out so he reached in his pocket took it out stuck it in his mouth and wanted the audience to believe that he could survive unfortunately it didn't work but uh various military organizations around the country were fooled i was uh sitting in the office one day and the phone went and it was a gentleman from the royal engineers or something like that and he said could you tell me anything about the under the miniaturized underwater breathing apparatus so i said yeah i'm quite okay with it so he said what we'd really like to know how long could you stay underwater with it so i said as long as you could hold your breath and i can imagine this poor fellow going absolutely white he said what do you mean i said it's it's a caught up but he said bond was under water for about three or four minutes i said yes but that is the expertise of the editor during the making of the world is not enough filmmakers discovered by accident that the q-boat had so much power that its engines could literally force the bow of the boat under the water the move was written into the film [Music] the cars used in spy movies have always captivated audiences they're fast they're sexy and they're loaded with the most outrageous gadgets filmmakers can think of ask any bond fan what the greatest gadget from the films are and the answer is almost universal the aston martin db5 the james bond car from goldfinger people just blew their minds when they saw this vehicle so much so that today people acknowledge it as the most famous car in the world and anybody on the street will see a silver birch aston martin and they'll say straight away god james bond's car for rocky santiago seeing the movie as a teenager would plant the seeds of a lifelong love of the aston martin it took him 21 years to find one but now he owns a pristine 1965 model of the car though his is red not silver my introduction to bond was the movie goldfinger i was in high school and that's an impressionable age and when you saw sean connery driving around in his db5 it left an unforgettable memory out on the road santiago says the car is an immediate attention grabber you can go to any car show anywhere on the planet and people that maybe wouldn't have given you the time of day all of a sudden are interested in you because you own and drive a db5 and i know it sounds weird but it's true because it's happened to me over and over again i think the car is special i think people that don't even like sports cars know what they are they always refer to them as that's the type of car that bonds the vehicles of james bond are some of the most famous in the world but outside the confines of the silver screen they're almost never seen in public from april to december 2001 bond fans had a chance to see half a dozen of the actual movie cars which are kept in the archives collection of eon productions producers of the bond films it happened two hours south of london at england's national motor museum at bewley margaret rolls is an administrator with the museum a recent tour of the display she noted in typical british understatement that it was a shame that a 225 000 bmw z8 was sawed in half during the filming of the world is not enough [Music] yes a bit of a disaster i wouldn't want it to happen to mine and what a shame to do this to such a pretty vehicle it was uh used in a very spectacular stunt in the film and it was literally cut in half by these five giant circular saws that was suspended from a helicopter some serious damage but of course bond survived you can imagine bmw when we went to their the development factory in munich the z8 was there as the new car you know and uh they pulled back the covers and there was this black beast there you know the red upholstery and we all went over and walked around and touched it and of course you can see the look of dismay when we said can we cut one in half the exhibit has a sampling of bond vehicles from throughout 007's movie career this is the lotus esprit from the spy who loved me and the thing you'll notice is that it hasn't got any wheels it's got fins instead it was an amphibious car and it went underwater it also had a periscope in the roof so that bond could actually see his adversaries when he was under the water this is a bmw 750 from the film tomorrow never dies and it is the ultimate bond gadget car it has everything conceivable that you could want on it including this magnificent row of rockets coming out of the sunroof and a wonderful 20 000 volt defense system to deter any would-be car thief now wouldn't we all like that on our cars and it's also totally bulletproof there's the bmw motorcycle from tomorrow never dies for our motorbike enthusiasts we've got a motorbike in the collection here a bmw jump bike this was used in tomorrow never dies in a very spectacular stunt in which piers brosnan handcuffed to his accomplice weilin on the bike actually had to jump from the top of one skyscraper to another with the whirring blades of a helicopter underneath i believe the french stunt rider who actually did the stunt managed to do it in one take and i imagine he was very pleased about that there's one of the original aston martin db5s used in the bond series it is the epitome of an english gentleman's sports car i think aston martin evokes a very romantic um nostalgic feel it's it's a lovely name if you think of sports cars british sports cars aston martin has to be the tops and what else would bond drive but the best and top british sports car it's it's just perfect it's classic it's not flashy it's just beautiful the driver's license used by james bond is on display as is the winterized aston martin vantage from the living daylights which in the film could do a lot more than simply travel easily on snow and ice it has some interesting features like these retractable skis for going on snow and ice and spikes in the tires to give a little bit more purchase it has many many gadgets all the controls being concealed in the armrest here as in many of the other bond cars but one of the most lethal was a laser beam that emitted from the hubcap of the wheels and in one very memorable scene in the film it actually sliced a police car in half and completely separated the top from the bottom of the chassis perhaps one of the most prized cars loaned to the museum from eon's archive collection is the rolls-royce phantom 3 from goldfinger for movie fans this was a rare opportunity to see a famous film car that until recently had been kept under wraps i'm sitting very very carefully on the bumper of this beautiful rolls-royce phantom 3 that was used in the film goldfinger we're absolutely delighted to have this car in the collection because for 35 years it's been in a private collection in america so nobody's been able to see it but two years ago eon brought it back at auction in new york it is the epitome of an english car and very different to the other cars in the exhibition here because it's not a racing or a sporty car it's just sheer elegance and luxury bond had switched to bmws for several of the films but for the 20th bond movie he returns to a gadget-laden version of the aston martin v12 vanquish james bond is now finally coming back and connecting with his roots aston martin has appeared in various guises over the years with the the double 07 films and now with the new v12 it's a perfect tie-in to the original first coming days of uh james bond this 48-valve six-liter 12-cylinder engine pushes a car that goes from zero to sixty in five seconds cars as close to space age as any on the road today we've also used some aerospace technology with a ceramic tile which actually protects the engine from the heat that comes from the catalytic converter if you look around as well you'll see a lot of the heat shields here and if you look down deep you'll see plenty more it's very similar to the aerospace technology that nasa uses with the space shuttle the vanquish which is priced at somewhere around a quarter million dollars is the perfect vehicle for 007 to take on the villains and make a quick getaway with the bond girls the famous ejector seat in the aston martin db5 actually worked and could throw a stuntman up to 40 feet [Music] on a trendy street in beverly hills california sits one of the country's most elite places to buy high-tech spy gadgets it's called the counter spy shop here every conceivable form of spy technology is for sale there are hidden cameras listening devices voice changers everything a good spy needs employee alex sofer is an expert on counter espionage gadgets that can make the business of covert operations easier whether a person is a spy or not you can have this pager on you in your pocket can be anywhere you want it to be if you walk into a room environment first and you're the first to enter that room this device will alert you if somebody else walks in this room wearing a wire or they're wearing a bug this can help many people out of many a jam what we have over here is a unit that will bottom line let you know if your telephone has been tapped or bugged this is a more sensitive unit used in larger situations such as film studios that have a concern that somebody might be trying to steal their secrets over the telephone many of the counter spy gadgets have been used in major motion pictures this will also filter and modulate to make the spy world of celluloid heroes more believable these glasses were using the original mission impossible what makes them not regular sunglasses is there's a camera and transmitter built into these sunglasses what i see and what i observe will be transmitted or recorded to a recording device it's as simple as that so what i see is what i'll be getting on film what we have here is a technology that we patented many years ago which is voice stress analysis this is the ccs truth phone this truth phone will basically allow a person to telephone somebody else ask them a series of questions and find out if they are lying this wireless microphone is able to transmit up to 100 feet through walls to another location once transmitted to that location this receiver over here will be taking in what is being transmitted an example of something that is illegal in the united states is this pack of cigarettes right here this would be considered a bug by the federal government or by the law this is a covert piece of audio equipment basically meaning that this is hidden the audio transmission is hidden it still works in the same manner you'll be transmitting up to about 200 to 300 feet through the walls to this receiver over here what we have here is a voice changer this will alter a male or female's voice in 15 different settings people will come in here such as a female she's getting some late phone calls at night sometimes a weird voice coming down the phone well she can all of a sudden become a very intimidating male that sounds like he's just got out of all in one jail so i'm going to start to go through the different dials and you should see my voice completely be altered all the way down through the light this briefcase basically is the same theme as from russia with love somebody tries to grab this they try to run away what i would do right here is press this remote right over here and shock him from up to 200 feet away 45 000 volts later i don't believe this thief will be trying to run away with this briefcase fighting the forces of evil with gadgets on the big screen is an easy task trying to do it in the real world takes some practice it's called special tactical services in virginia here security companies bodyguards even navy seals and elite marine commando units train there's high-speed defensive and offensive driving techniques and high-tech weapons training though several of the sts instructors are capable of doing many of the same things that james bond does none of them can do it all for these teachers that is the zone that lies between the fiction of a good novel or movie and the facts of life for spy professionals for one guy to be able to do all those things at the greatest level he could ever do it at it takes a great amount of maintenance to be able to kick the crap out of anybody that comes along okay you better be training to kick the crap out of people to be able to shoot any shot at a moment's notice from 10 inches to 10 yards to 10 miles you better be training at it to be able to drive a car any car any direction in the water under the water over a cliff whatever the case may be you better be out there handling cars one thing we do here is we don't have one guy that does it all even you know our you know people like to compare some people to james bond because they do the neat things they skydive or they dive or they they were a sealer a ranger or a cie guy or whatever the case may be when we train people here we bring in the experts for that particular piece of the information we don't have one guy teaching hostage rescue driving shooting and every every aspect of the thing because no one that i know can do every one of those things to the degree of proficiency that you need to pass it on to other people that pitch that site you just had that's what we're looking for on an abandoned airstrip they slam cars together at high speed proving that vehicles behave differently in real life than they do in the movies they teach how to cause another car to spin out without damaging their own and students learn a series of maneuvers that may one day save their lives or the lives of the people they are hired to protect in an isolated woods not far from the runway a different and more lethal set of scenarios is played out here the tactics used by spies and counter spies throughout the world are practiced in a scenario of hostage taking one situation shows how a target in a car can safely be removed from a field of fire even if the driver is shot dead [Applause] the other driver is taught how to do high-speed maneuvers from the passenger seat in a second situation when the driver of one car is shot the driver of a second car is taught how to safely push the first vehicle to safety before the bad guys can finish the job classes at sts feature some of the most high-tech bond-like gear used in covert operations today such as this thermal imaging scope which finds a target not by sight but by body heat but it's always going to fall back to the fundamentals i don't care what kind of gadget you put on a gun you still have to hold it steady control the trigger and have some kind of sight reference to be sure you're going to hit the intended target i know it for a fact if you don't have a grasp on the fundamentals you're not going to achieve any success as spy films do their best to mimic the real world it's getting harder and harder to come up with new ways to impress savvy movie audiences but those who make the films will keep trying the people behind the scenes they take something which they believe is something can be seen on the screen and adapt it to whatever they want to do and they absolutely love what they do because they're convinced that what they come up in their mind will entertain the people on the screen and that's what their job is to do they firmly believe in everything they do they come up with an idea they give it to the producers it either works or it doesn't and then we finally see it's on the screen finding clever ways to meld the world of real spy technology with the magic of the movies has always been an art it is a creative blend of skill and imagination finding the best way to take high-tech gadgets and use them in fictional stories this balancing act covers the gamut of thrills and dangers in the covert world on the water in the air and on the road the technology can at once save a spy from certain destruction and make a film a box office smash it's a place where movies magic artistry and action combine to create the best that fact and fiction have to offer the amazing gadgets from the world of james bond [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

2022-04-08 11:47

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