James Bond’s Aston Martin V8 that hides a jet engine booster rocket and heat-seeking missiles. A deadly shoe that shoots a poisonous dagger. A top secret weapons system that lets satellites set off electromagnetic pulses. A first-of-its-kind exhibit that gets up close with the science and technology that drives Bond films is likely to leave 007 stirred, and maybe a little shaken.
The exhibit, “007 Science: Inventing the World of James Bond,” on display at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry through October 27, includes 13 tricked-out vehicles and more than 90 original artifacts, at least one from each film in the long-running franchise. Among them are Jaws’ metal teeth from The Spy Who Loved Me; an MI6 retina scanner that enabled entry into the MI6 communications room in GoldenEye; the Parahawk snowmobile hybrid from The World Is Not Enough; and a bionic eyeball from No Time to Die that sits alongside the analyzer that gadget master Q used to hack it and access vital Spectre data.
“Bond films introduced technologies that were new to the general public, as well as set the stage for innovations that were decades in the making,” Kathleen McCarthy, director of collections and head curator at the Museum of Science and Industry, said in an interview.
McCarthy cites the multitone pager featured in From Russia with Love, noting that the 1963 film likely marked the first time the general public saw the instant communication device.
“At the time pagers were used in hospitals and by first responders,” she said. “It wasn’t until decades later that they became a popular communication device that allowed us to be reachable at all times.”
Then there’s the 1983 Seiko TV wristwatch that showed up in Octopussy, which came out the following year. Back then, the new gizmo would have been considered nothing short of revolutionary.
“Forty years ago, it would have been quite amazing to see this tiny screen made of state-of-the-art LCD materials,” McCarthy said. “The watch also had other features we have come to rely on in today’s smartwatches.”
Envisioning the Future
The exhibit, produced in partnership with Eon Productions, creator of Bond films, doesn’t just look at 007 characters as early adopters, it features a number of fantastical onscreen gadgets that prefigured real-world technologies. The Bell Rocket Belt jetpack that let the secret agent make a quick escape in 1965 film Thunderball is displayed next to a Jet Suit by Gravity Industries. The Snooper Dog from 1985 film A View To A Kill sits beside a contemporary robot dog from Unitree.
Bond superfan Andy Lipnick, the former guitarist in a James Bond cover band who also happens to be my brother-in-law, said he’s always been struck by the film production teams’ attention to blurring the line between fiction and fact.
“I’m really impressed by how much detail they put into them to make them seem as real as possible,” he said. “It looks like they really work. They look authentic.”
The exhibit also details the attention that went into science storylines on everything from nuclear bombs to bioengineering.
For example, to prepare for the first James Bond movie, 1962’s Doctor No producers borrowed real research equipment from labs to create a nuclear facility for the villain grounded in real science.
Make Like You’re Q
Exhibit visitors can pop into a lab of their own inspired by Q to try their hand at developing the perfect vehicle for spying activities or designing stunts for a fearless intelligence agent like Bond. They can solve puzzles to decode the kind of secret messages that must be deciphered to save the world from evil.
Concurrent with the exhibit, the museum will offer programs inspired by the Bond films and focused on spycraft, intelligence and encryption. These will include a “Secret Agent Science” summer camp for kids in third through fifth grades and a “Spycraft Workshop” camp for kids in grades six to nine.
“The exhibition immerses guests in creativity and resourcefulness,” McCarthy said. “Ordinary objects take on extraordinary properties and the seemingly impossible becomes possible using science and engineering to solve challenges. We hope guests are inspired to see their world in a new light, full of possibility and are inspired to use their ingenuity to solve pressing challenges in their lives, their communities and the world.”
