truth+and+myth



When people say CIA agent they think of Ethan Hunt (Mission Impossible), Maxwell Smart (get smart), or James Bond (007). But exactly what parts of these shows are real and what parts slip from the realm of reality into our imagination.



In most spy movies there are gadgets that almost always seem to be more than meets the eye. Surprisingly, this portion of the movies seems to be accurate. However the actual abilities of these gadgets are much more limited than movies like mission impossible would have us think. For example In Thunderball (007), James Bond had a watch that was also a Geiger counter. In reality, there are spy watches, but the watches cannot do the complex things that a Geiger counter is capable of (this one from the time period of Thunderball can only record sound).



On some very rare occasions reality can exactly match fiction. In another 007 film James Bond has a cigarette that is also a single shot firearm. The OSS developed an identical cigarette, and I sometimes wonder if Ian Fleming has a history in espionage.

As good as this may sound as far as reality matching fiction goes, this is a rare example, and most of the time objects like these are only at home on the silver screen. Most "spy gadgets" are more primitive than a pen grenade or LASER watch (quoting 007)



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