James Bond Film Gadgets and Devices – For Your Eyes Only

For Your Eyes Only Gadgets

A.T.A.C.

Or, Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator.
Or, handy acronym thought up over tea and biscuits during the writing stage.
The device uses low frequency coded transmissions to order submarines to launch ballistic missiles.
It’s very much an updated storyline of the Lektor Decoder from Thunderball, working to the principle that the machine is stolen and the enemy could use it to launch missiles against British forces. Or even, “Render the entire Polaris fleet useless”, according to the defence minister.
James Bond is then set off on his way.

The scytale (which rhymes with Italy), was perhaps the most well known early encryption machine. The device featured a rod or stick wrapped with a narrow strip of leather (often worn as a belt to hide its real purpose) or papyrus. The coder wrote his message lengthwise across the strip. A specific thickness of rod would be required to read the message when wrapped – if someone did not have the correct thickness, it could not be read.

It was however, the Cipher and Coding machinery and equipment that played such a prominent part in the Second World War that influenced Ian Fleming’s writing. No less than three James Bond films feature coders and deciphering type devices.
From Russia With Love – Lektor Decoder
For Your Eyes Only - Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator (A.T.A.C.)
Tomorrow Never Dies – Encoder
Pierce Brosnan’s incarnation of 007 came across Goldeneye in the previous film, which was a device that did virtually the same job as the Tomorrow Never Dies Encoder, and later, he dealt with Icarus, which also performed a similar function – it is perhaps no surprise that the franchise struggled at around this point in its originality.
In many respects the Voice Changing Machine featured in Diamonds Are Forever, is also an imaginative version of a coding/decoding machine. Even the Microfilm and Reader featured in The Spy Who Loved Me, is used for decoding purposes.

Early Scytale

WWII Enigma Machine

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