James Bond's Creator, and the Real Spy Gadgets He Inspired

cylonlover writes "It's one of the most memorable moments in perhaps the best James Bond film, From Russia with Love: SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebb, posing as a hotel maid, drops her gun, and appears to be at a disadvantage as she goes toe to toe with Sean Connery's imposing Bond. That is until she deploys her iconic poison-tipped dagger shoes, which have gone on to be copied in other notable action films. But as kitsch as Klebb's cleaver clogs might seem, the CIA attempted to replicate them, and another classic Bond gadget, in real life, according to research by Dr. Christopher Moran of Warwick University. At the heart of the story is the close friendship of Bond author Ian Fleming and former CIA Director Allen Dulles. Gizmag spoke to Moran about 20th century Intelligence, and its peculiar relationship with the fictional British spy."

Rebreather

[Nidi62]

I remember years ago watching a History Channel special on Bond gadgets, and one of the ones that came up was the tiny rebreather used by Bond in the film Thunderball. According to the person they were interviewing (propmaster for the movie possibly, or a producer) MI5 actually called them up and asked them how the rebreather worked, as they wanted to copy it. The person had to tell them that it was only a prop, and didn't actually work.

Re:CIA :- Centre for Imitating Art

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Life imitating art imitating life.

Why not?

Ian Fleming, along with Eric Frank Russel, were members of Britain's intelligence community, where such devices were designed and deployed, for real, during WWII. Some of the stuff the "department of dirty tricks" came up with were brilliant.

Russel also used his WWII experience in his post-war writing. Notable (and perhaps my very favorite SF novel) is _Wasp_, which is a thinly-disguised recycling of one of Russel's plans for infiltrated saboteurs targeting Japan, combined with techniques that also ended up in the taining manual for the British Home Guard. (The latter was to be the nucleus of a resistance movement if the NAZIs occupied the British Isles.)

Gadgets in stories are more plausible if they might actually work, and plausible and potentially useful story gadgets have a track record of inspiring the development of the real thing. (Consider, for instance, the clamshell-style cellphone, inspired by the Star Trek communicator - which Motorola implicitly acknowledged by naming the first one the "StarTAC".)