Dr. No (1962)
Context: Having just seen the assassination of John Strangways (a regional MI6 officer in Jamaica) by the "Three Blind Mice" in the film's opening moments, we now see a man's hand (one of the Mice again) open the gate to Strangways' home. The gate has a mail/letter box fixed to it.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? n/a
Comments: OK, from here on out I'm actually going to draw the line at electronics because otherwise this gets ridiculous, but it was pretty funny that one of the earliest shots of the very first movie is of a sort of communication technology!
Context: Strangways' secretary Mary Trueblood (yes that's her name) opens a disguised bookshelf panel to reveal a hidden radio, which she uses to attempt her routine daily contact with London.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments (1/2): We're off to a great start here, because I was all set to label this setup as "Q Branch" thanks to that oh-so-clever trompe l'oeil bookshelf. But zoom in to the close-up and - what's this?!
Comments (2/2): ...this top-secret radio is in fact a K.W. "Vanguard", one of the most popular models distributed by Dartford-based K.W. Electronics, a major English manufacturer of amateur radios!
Single-sideband (SSB) radio transmitters like the Vanguard were invented during WWI (they allowed for longer-range transmissions than existing radio tech) but became popular among amateur radio hobbyists post-WWII - thanks in part to the proliferation of affordable kits and ready-made models like K.W.'s in the late '50s.
Transmitting all the way from Jamaica to London probably is still a bit of a stretch for this equipment - but throw in a couple strategically-placed relays up the coast of North America (or maybe over the Caribbean to Cabo Verde, the Canary Islands, or the Azores) and there may not be any MI6 customization to this rig at all.
Context: On the other side of the pond, an MI6 receiver at a (presumably) London station passes news that Mary Trueblood's routine transmission has suddenly cut short.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: We don't get close enough this time to get a good look at the equipment, but other than the pure amount of radios, these seem like pretty standard/mass-produced radio receivers in this, though maybe higher-quality stuff aimed at a commercial/production-type office rather than amateur kits.
And it's a bit hard to tell, but it looks like the map on the right in the background has pins all up the east coast of the U.S. and Canada, plus the Canary Islands and Madeira, so my relay theory is on track!
Context: On the other side of the room, the "Foreman of Signals" calls in to MI6 headquarters.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: The Foreman of Signals gives our first glimpse in the series of your bog-standard landline telephone, which is probably one of the defining communication technologies of the 20th century and so ubiquitous that I'll only comment on particularly interesting or new flavors after this.
It's more difficult to parse exactly what's in the rack the guy in the background is examining - given its position right at the end of the long bank of radio receivers, it could be some kind of control device, a central receiving unit (like a switch or router) for whatever myriad radio signals are coming in to this facility via [antennas on the roof? grounded cables from antennae elsewhere?] that then parses the signal out to the individual receivers in the bank.
That's what my money would be on, since this device has very limited options for input (no keyboard, relatively few switches or dials, no visible way to load any media or data storage devices like punch cards, magnetic tape, etc.) so it seems less likely to be a general-purpose computing device like a small mainframe or early minicomputer.
Context: Bond arrives at MI6 headquarters to receive a mission briefing - M calls Moneypenny to let Bond into his office.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Oh, we are going to have some fun tracking the evolution of the intercom between M and Moneypenny! This one appears to just be borrowing all the same tech as the Foreman's telephone, but presumably only wired for much, much more limited inter-office range.
In fact there's maybe only one switch if any on that intercom; and since Moneypenny has another telephone with a rotary dial right next to it for connecting to the rest of the building and/or out of the office, it's probably literally just a two-way intercom between M's office and hers!
Context: Bond arrives in Jamaica to investigate Strangways' "disappearance". While leaving the airport, a mysterious woman attempts to take a picture of him.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Though 35mm cameras started to become the norm for both professional and amateur photography in the early '60s, Dr. No's spy Annabel Chung is still using a press camera, of the type that we associate with fast-talking reporters in 1930s screwball comedies and such.
We don't get close or clean enough to get an idea of the model, but it looks like Chung's is collapsible (usually notable by the bellows on the side), has a synchronized flash (the type using disposable bulbs for single-use - could be either a General Electric #5 or Sylvania Press 25 bulb, both of which were extremely common on such late-period press cameras) and probably takes 4x5 inch sheet film (which is significantly larger than 35mm frames, and would get loaded into the camera via sheet film holders one-by-one).
Context: Another mysterious man greets Bond at the airport claiming to be a driver sent for him by Government House - Bond ducks in to a phone booth to call ahead and finds that the governor sent no such driver.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Bond's use of a public payphone begs the question - does James Bond carry coins on his person? Where? How? Should we imagine Sean Connery lightly jangling as he strolls through public spaces (or worse, as he does cool sneaky spy stuff)?
Context: After a bit of misadventure, Bond finally arrives at Government House to discuss Strangways' disappearance with the Chief Secretary of the colonial British government, Pleydell Smith.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Smith has another fun intercom, presumably primarily for communication with his secretary, although it's got some funky extra dials on the front that indicate this one might be a combo unit able to make external calls as well.
Context: Investigating a local fisherman named Quarrell who associated with Strangways, Bond discovers (after a slight tiff in a bar backroom) that Quarrell is working with CIA agent Felix Leiter, all seeking what happened to Strangways. The brief altercation/misunderstanding plays out in front of a jukebox.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Quite specifically, the jukebox is identifiably a Seeburg AY100 or AY160, a line that had just been released in 1961 for playing 7-inch vinyl records (which usually hold just one song on each side) at an auto-adjusting speed of 45 or 33 rpm. So this hole-in-the-wall Kingston bar must be doing pretty well to keep up with the latest and greatest tech!
Seeburg was an American manufacturer and basically synonymous with jukeboxes in their heyday of the '50s. It was a big deal (for record distributors/sales) that with the AY line jukebox owners could highlight particular artists by swapping individual song title strips and a record cover into the blank spots at the top of the machine (see: the yellow square right next to the "Artist of the Week" script!)
These were also apparently the last Seeburg units to feature a visible record-loading mechanism - bad news for those of us who want to see behind the curtain!
Context: Later that night at the bar, the mysterious photographer (Chung) is back, trying (not very surreptitiously) to get a picture of Bond for Dr. No again.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: This time Chung seems to have ditched her press camera for an ever-so-slightly more subtle 35mm one (though it's really the flash that keeps giving the game away). 35mm film gets you less detail per-frame than 4x5 inch sheets, but on the flip side you load it in rolls and get wayyy more attempts between reloading, so perhaps Chung's previous inability to get a clear shot has made her opt for quantity over quality for her surveillance.
Again, we don't get a clear enough shot to even attempt a model identification here, especially since basically every single international manufacturer had adopted the same basic casing design of molded black plastic and satin chrome tops by this time period.
Context: Bond flirts with Pleydell Smith's secretary, Miss Taro, after catching her listening in on one of their briefings.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Another telephone, but actually I'm looking at Miss Taro's Royal typewriter. Royal was a dominant, Hartford-based manufacturer, and Bond author Ian Fleming very famously wrote the novels on a gold-plated Royal Quiet Deluxe.
This doesn't appear to be an intentional nod though - or at least, it doesn't look like Miss Taro's model is a Quiet Deluxe (the size and placement of the logo are wrong; and the QD was billed as a "portable" model that'd be a little out of place in a desktop office environment anyway). It's tough to ID only seeing the backside, but from browsing around it looks like a mid-'50s model HH to me.
Comments: Just another shot from a different angle of Pleydell Smith's desk, including two telephones and that intercom with a rotary dial. This dude has to talk to a lot of people in varied physical locations/networks on the regular.
Context: Miss Taro invites Bond to her apartment - she's surprised when he shows up because she's actually a double agent for Dr. No and some assassins tried to kill Bond on the way, but she rolls with it and sleeps with him anyway. After, Bond calls for a car to take them to dinner.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: The phone itself is not particularly interesting but it did seem worth noting that this is the 1962 version of Uber/Lyft.
Context: After hustling Miss Taro into a government car to be arrested (the Uber was a trick!), Bond puts on a record (not just any record, in fact - it's the single of "Underneath the Mango Tree" performed by Nikki Van der Zyl that appears to be sweeping the nation during Bond's visit) in her apartment while waiting for another one of Dr. No's operatives to show up.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Crosley could probably make a killing by aping the design of this portable record player and advertising it straight to Bond fans.
(While there was a Crosley Corporation that manufactured radios in the '20s to the '60s, which the modern Crosley Radio takes its name from, I don't believe they made turntables, certainly not in this Urban-Outfitters-chic style)
Context: Bond eventually arrives at Dr. No's lair, where some minions take Bond and Honey Ryder through a decontamination process to get rid of the radioactivity they've picked up on the surface of Dr. No's island.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Most of the tech/console you're seeing here is related to the decontamination equipment, not communications - but I just found it hilarious that this guy requires a microphone and amplifier to scream instructions at Bond, even though he is literally just out of frame about two or three feet to the left here.
Context: Bond escapes from a jail cell and sneaks into Dr. No's control room, where they are preparing to intercept a moon rocket launching from Cape Canaveral.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments (1/3): At last, we get to some Ken Adam-designed nonsense in the film's final moments! What is on those reels of magnetic data tape spinning just behind and to the left of Dr. No?! They look probably like half-inch reels, and given the year, that puts them at a good chance of being IBM 7-track tape - the first major/common magnetic-tape data storage system. (Did the IBM technician who came to install Dr. No's mainframe know what was going on in Crab Key this whole time? or did they go home to find a tarantula in their bed in Poughkeepsie?)
In any case, we can assume that whatever software Dr. No is running on this mainframe has something to do with the surveillance setup just to its right...
Comments (2/3): ...which is a hilariously redundant live video feed of what appears to be the exact same camera angle of the Canaveral launch pad just....cropped a tiny bit so that it looks like four different angles? One of which is just a useless blur? I have questions.
Besides the top left, the picture on the other monitors also displays visual artifacts that would come from being originally shot on 16 or even 35mm film rather than an analog video camera, suggesting Dr. No's operatives in Florida have a whole, near-synchronous telecine setup that records on film but then almost instantly broadcasts the frames as a television signal to Jamaica. Impressive and worthy of Q Branch, indeed!
Comments (3/3): Finally, let's pour one out for this mainframe computer for calculating rocket trajectories (before Bond blows it and the rest of the facility to hell), which we know is a rocket trajectory computer because it gets its own adorable little sign (just in case Dr. No's staff confuse it for the redundant-surveillance-feed computer, I guess?)
From Russia With Love (1963)
Context: Chess master Kronsteen departs a tournament after being summoned by his superiors in SPECTRE. The press is out in force to cover his stunning victory.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: We really don't get a clear look at the cameras used by the photographers; the one on the left appears to be using a press camera (which would explain his saddle bag, for carrying additional 4x5 sheets for reloading) while the one on the right has a more portable 35mm option.
Context: Kronsteen arrives in the office of SPECTRE's "Number One" (Blofeld, though no one calls him that yet in this movie); Number One and Number Three, Soviet ex-SMERSH operative Rosa Klebb, are already waiting.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments Blofeld has a pretty sleek rotary phone on his desk. Here in the early '60s we are right in the era at which rotary dials started to be replaced by push-button technology (it was in fact this very same year, 1963, that the Bell System in the U.S. unveiled its patented "Touch-Tone" technology), so it will be interesting to watch how quickly they phase out.
Context: We're treated to a bit of bucolic scene-setting before panning over to Bond on a riverside vacation somewhere in England (since this rando is punting - it might be Cambridge, where it has been implied multiple times through the series that Bond went to university?)
These passers-by are, of course, listening to the film's title track on a chic portable radio.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments Portable transistor radios had only been invented in 1947 and commercialized in 1954, starting with the hand-held Regency TR-1. Before that, radio receivers required bulky vacuum-tube technology and were only available to the public in larger units meant to be installed in your living room or such. The late '50s saw a giant boom in elaborate design for portable AM/FM radios as the devices became a must-have for handsome young folk like those seen here.
In fact the design on this radio is so distinct, even from long range it's quite clearly a Bush TR82, an immensely popular British model first released in 1959 that to this day is the source for a huge number of contemporary "retro"-style consumer electronics (Akai has one, Nedis, Thomson, etc. )
Context: Bond's vacation is interrupted when the pager in his coat pocket starts beeping - indicating that someone at MI6 is trying to call him.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments: Yes, this is just a pager, and yes, I'm calling it "Q Branch"! Dig this: one-way paging technology had been invented in the late '40s and put to some limited uses before this (e.g. there was a paging service available for NYC doctors in the '50s). Bell System had also just introduced the world's first broadly-available commercial paging system, the Bellboy, at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. But by the time of From Russia With Love's release in 1963, Bellboy was available in...*checks notes* uh, Akron and Cincinnati.
So, paging was on the cusp of becoming a thing but was not yet commonplace tech for the average film-goer at this point. And what pagers were around definitely weren't this small and subtle yet: they looked more like, at best, bulky TV remotes. Here's an ad for a pager from 1981 that literally employs Leonard Nimoy to imply how cutting-edge and space-edge this device is - and it's still significantly chunkier than Bond's device from almost twenty years earlier.
Context: Responding to the pager, Bond uses a phone in his car to call in to Moneypenny at MI6 HQ.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments: This is really tricky to classify. Car phones were a thing by 1963, mostly pushed forward by major U.S. manufacturers like Motorola and GE, but also by companies like British Pye Radio. But due to high manufacturing costs and complications with tapping the radio frequencies used by mobile phones into the usual hard-line telephone services of the time (limited range or outright incompatibility with the local phone network depending on where you drove; interference from other radio signals causing poor quality signal, etc) they were mad expensive and usually only employed by government services or super high-end businesses.
So while it's possible that Bond's car phone is technically on "off-the-rack" model, it's clearly intended here as a status symbol, something unattainably cool that he only has as a super-spy. So I'm going to call this "Q Branch".
Context: Back at MI6, M pages Moneypenny to bring in Q as part of Bond's mission briefing.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: M and Moneypenny's telephone-style intercoms have been replaced by a push-button model where both the speaker and microphone just play out into the room, rather than via a handset. Not as good for privacy, far better for M to make impeccably-timed snarky asides to Moneypenny about 007 as the latter leaves the office.
Context: Arriving in Istanbul, Bond checks his hotel room for secret listening devices. He finds one almost instantly.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments: Despite being presented as a super-sneaky attempt to eavesdrop on Bond, this bug is almost hilariously quaint compared with the actually cutting-edge Soviet surveillance tech of the time - it's pretty bulky (compared to an olive) *and* wired?! Certainly the operatives in this hotel are not doing the best with what they've got, you'd think you could at least embed this transmitter inside the picture frame or something so it's not right there on the wall.
Context: Before calling down to reception, Bond pulls out some kind of RF (radio frequency) detector to test the hotel room's phone for a wiretap.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments (1/2): Now this one starts to get funky. The base of a landline telephone is/was indeed a pretty standard place to plant a bug since it's 1) unobtrusive, especially assuming you can easily install the device without detection as you could here in a hotel, and 2) you have a high likelihood of a high-quality signal since you can hook directly up to the phone line and transmit the signal on the line - which would be the audio of someone speaking directly into a receiver (the telephone handset's microphone) rather than just picking up on ambient sound vibrations in the room like the bug behind the picture frame.
An RF probe or detector would then also be a natural counter-measure for Bond, as a bug would indeed be actively emitting a radio frequency that you wouldn't/shouldn't see just from an electric wire like a telephone line at rest.
So it's not the setup in the room that's questionable, it's the reveal of who is listening, and where...
Comments (2/2): ...because it turns out the people listening in are not, say, tuning in with a radio receiver in a van across the street or something. They are the hotel reception? Right downstairs?
Which, if you don't quite get my drift, means the radio-transmitting bug inside Bond's phone is entirely superfluous. You could place a physical wiretap to divert and intercept Bond's calls literally anywhere in the wire run from Bond's room to the switchboard, if the staff is on board. Which, since the manager is standing right next to the switchboard with a handset, appears to be what they've done? So why is there also a radio-emitting bug involved? Is there supposed to be more than one surveillance team involved here - Soviets and SPECTRE? Or are the obvious listening devices part of Kronsteen's ploy to challenge Bond to step consciously into a trap? It's very unclear.
Context: MI6 station head Kerim Bey and Bond spy on the Soviet consulate using a hidden periscope.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments (1/2): This periscope seems to have been almost directly transplanted from a naval submarine - it's a super sturdy mechanism, probably with prisms rather than simple mirrors to produce a stable image, and with hydraulics to assist with pushing it up and down and everything. Which really begs the question...
Comments (2/2): ...um, how does no one in the consulate see this thing when it's extended? It's not even, like, under a table or anything?
Context: Bond seduces Tatiana Romanova, the Soviet consulate clerk that Rosa Klebb has secretly enlisted for SPECTRE. Klebb films the tryst through a one-way mirror.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Given the darkness of the hidden room and the SPECTRE agent's position, it's not actually super clear just from the visual whether they're using a still or movie camera to gather blackmail material on Bond - but the soundtrack makes it very clear that it's some kind of small format film format. We'll actually circle back to this one later with more detail.
Context: Prepping their plan to steal a Soviet encoding device from the consulate, Bond stops to apparently take a picture of Tatiana.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments (1/2): Bond plays the tourist well here with a box camera (cheap options with the tradeoff that you can't make many if any adjustments to focus, aperture, shutter speed, zoom, etc.)
(To get real specific, it seems to be a type of "TLR" - twin lens reflux - with a dedicated second lens for the viewfinder, which Bond is peering into on the top side of the camera. There weren't many British-manufactured TLRs in this time period, so Bond's "camera" would likely be either a German or Japanese model.)
But in any case, this very "Radio Shack" device has a secret...
Comments (2/2): ...what appears to be one kind of recording device is in fact another! Bond is actually interested in getting Tatiana's description of the interior of the consulate back to MI6 with a tiny, concealed 1/4-inch reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Context: M and others back at MI6 headquarters listen to Bond's speedily-delivered tape.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Reel-to-reel tape was probably at its absolute peak as a consumer product in 1963 - the compact cassette was about to be commercially introduced by a Dutch company in August and eat reel-to-reel's lunch (again, as a consumer/amateur/home product anyway; reel-to-reel would remain relevant in professional recording and broadcast environments for decades yet). Moneypenny probably just had to pop down to the local Currys to pick this up for the office.
Context: Skipping all the way to the very end of the film - Bond and Tatiana have successfully thwarted SPECTRE's plans and escaped to Venice. Riding in a gondola, they encounter some actual tourists.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: American Tourist #1 on the left (I'm just assuming these assholes are American, look at them) has a viewfinder camera that looks an awful lot like the Kodak Brownie Fiesta, which had just started production the previous year.
American Tourist #2 on the right appears to be wielding a standard 8mm movie camera ("Super 8", which became even more phenomenally popular as an amateur/home movie format, wouldn't be released until 1965). It doesn't look like any of the Kodak models of the time that I could find (like the 8mm Brownie Movie Camera), it could be a Bell and Howell or a Bolex.
Context: Bond takes a celebratory peek at the unwitting stag film that Rosa Klebb made earlier of him and Tatiana.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Now that we actually get to see the developed reel, we can confirm that Klebb was in fact also filming on standard 8mm.
This was also an incredible moment to revisit/rediscover, as I had not seen this movie for many years and had completely forgotten that there's a moment where Bond recreates the infamous pose that literally everyone in my field is forced by a photographer to stage at some point in their career. (Go ahead and do an image search for "film archivist", you'll see what I mean)
Goldfinger (1964)
Context: At a resort in Miami, jeweler and gold dealer Auric Goldfinger sits down to play gin with another guest. He feigns being hard of hearing and requiring a hearing aid.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: Portable, transistor-based, body-worn hearing aids were commercialized in the early '50s and commonplace by 1964. In fact it would be some decades yet before behind-ear or even in-ear aids replaced the basic model/concept here, where the portable case contains the sound amplifier (hence Goldfinger specifically trying to hold up the case closer to his partner rather than incline his head) and the ear mold contains a tiny loudspeaker.
Context: Bond breaks into Goldfinger's room and discovers that Goldfinger is in fact cheating at cards by having Jill Masterson spy on his opponent's hand and report to him via radio (his hearing aid is not in fact an amplifier, it's a receiver).
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments (1/2): The radiotelephone tech on display here is basically the same as with walkie-talkies, only designed to go one-way rather than two-way (Goldfinger's portable unit is only a receiver, not a transmitter - he seems incapable of speaking back to Jill, though perhaps that's just because it would give away his ruse).
Jill's transmitter is also obviously a little hefiter and less portable than a walkie-talkie, so it probably has a bit more power/ability to broadcast a stronger signal over a wider range than a strictly portable transmitter. That'd be helpful somewhere like a crowded resort on a crowded beach, where there's probably a fair number of other radio-based devices between her and Goldfinger that could otherwise cause interference and poor audio signal.
Comments (2/2): Even in close-up, it was tough to ID this model, since the design is remarkably generic/bland for a commercial model of the '60s - but it is definitely a Pye Cambridge AM10D (with the manufacturer info/logo painted over by the props department).
I like the brief highlighting of squelch, which is basically just a particular type of noise reduction for filtering out interference from weak, ambient radio signals, but with an infinitely cooler name.
Context: A tasteful cut to a glass of champagne and a portable AM/FM radio on Jill's side table lets us know that she and Bond totally had sex.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: In searching models I found a thread of shortwave radio enthusiasts also seeking to identify this exact frame from Goldfinger, and they appeared stumped, so I'm going to concede quickly because no way in hell I can do better. There's a brief suggestion/lead that it might be a model from Britain's GEC, which would certainly track, but I could find no images of GEC radios that matched.
Likewise, since this is Goldfinger's room, it is unknown whether this is Jill's or Goldfinger's radio (for them to listen to The Beatles without earmuffs, presumably).
Context: Felix Leiter has divined Bond's location and calls to the room to set up a meeting with Bond.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: I was just struck by this telephone that has clearly had its rotary dial covered or replaced by a blank plate. It makes sense for a hotel, where all calls from an individual room would be piped to a central switchboard before being able to dial another room or out of the hotel to the wider phone network; this setup forces you to talk to the switchboard operator to do the dialing for you rather than let guests try to make any connections themselves.
Context: Knocked out by Oddjob in the kitchen, Bond awakens and comes back to the bedroom to find Jill dead (famously, via gold paint).
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: I have so far also been stumped tracking down the television model in Goldfinger's hotel room. Blame perhaps the enshittification of search in the AI era (though Google Image reverse image search still seems fairly decent overall and just specifically foiled by how generic the designs are here).
Likely manufacturing suspects (assuming it's a British maker, since this appears to be on set at Pinewood) would include Baird, Bush, and GEC, but I can't yet find comprehensive-enough model listings for any of them that include visual reference to compare.
Context: Bond returns to MI6 headquarters for a debrief on what just happened in Miami and to begin pursuit of Goldfinger.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments (1/2): Moneypenny's intercom looks almost but not quite exactly the same as M's model in From Russia With Love...
Comments (2/2): ...which is confirmed a moment later, because M himself is pressing the talk-to-speak button on the right side of his intercom, while in FRWL the button is closer to the left side (compare to slide 6 above).
They are, otherwise, virtually indistinguishable, making one wonder about MI6's budget if they're needlessly replacing office equipment within the year.
Context: Bond gets equipped for his mission by MI6's lead technologist, Q. One of the primary gadgets is a slick, not-at-all-conspicuous set of tracking devices.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments (1/2): The concept of a pocket-sized rectangle that constantly broadcasts the carrier's precise location is of course now so (terrifyingly) mundane that it is difficult to explain how radical Q Branch's work here would appear at the time.
Man-made satellites and their various applications were obviously increasingly a thing in the public consciousness in the early '60s thanks to the international space race, but in 1964 the civilian world would just barely have been made aware of Transit, the world's first operational satellite navigation system (and the U.S. Department of Defense's precursor to GPS). Even once Transit opened from exclusively guiding the U.S. Navy to being technically available for "private" use, the latter remained largely limited to high-end/commercial naval navigation systems and geographical surveying for decades; a far cry from the pint-size, single-person level tracking seen here.
Various types of radio navigation systems had been put into application throughout the 20th century (with increasing sophistication thanks to a pile of military funding through two World Wars, of course), but most - certainly those with both the longest and/or most accurate ranges - required the use of either aircraft or multiple receiving stations working in tandem to triangulate the location of a transmitter...
Comments (2/2): ...and we never get any indication that Q's system features any components besides the pocket-sized transmitters and then this receiving unit (and moving map display) inside Bond's car.
Set aside the questions of how this underlying technology even works, and compare these images to the bulky and completely obscure, dial/coordinate-based Decca Navigator System, an actual British radiotechnology navigation system in widespread commercial use at the time. As far as leaping ahead and predicting where technology was about to go, this might be some of the series' most stunningly accurate guesswork.
Context: Bond is caught sneaking around Goldfinger's factory in Switzerland - he wakes up in an asbolutely baffling room, strapped to a table and about to be killed with an industrial laser.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments (1/2): Presumably, the laser has some sort of practical application in Goldfinger's smelting/metallurgy operation, but then why is this room furnished more like a mid-century modern office than a factory floor? If the laser is for cutting giant blocks of gold down to size, why are there no conveyor belts or, like, any other visible mechanism for transporting absolutely massive hunks of metal in and out? I have so many questions.
And nautrally those questions extend to whatever is happening with the various pieces of media equipment in the background here. Quite a bit of it looks literally repurposed from earlier films - I'm actually rather certain that some of the radio equipment is straight from the London signal house at the beginning of Dr. No (see slides 4-5 there), and the video surveillance screens are straight out of the villain's lair at the end of that same film. Perhaps SPECTRE has a surplus exchange program?
Comments (2/2): In any case, operating the giant laser appears to require a small armada of computers and about a half-dozen technicians; but, given the typical size, application, and processing power of mainframe systems at the time, that actually tracks.
These all, like in Dr. No's lair, look like 1/2-inch data storage reels, so probably IBM 7-track tape again, though 9-track (same size, more efficient data storage on the tape) had just been introduced this same year alongside IBM's famed System/360. Goldfinger's operation is certainly cutting-edge, but is he an early adopter?
Context: With Bond in tow, Goldfinger flies from Switzerland to Kentucky to prepare for his devious heist of Fort Knox. His pilot Pussy Galore radios ahead for landing at Goldfinger's ranch.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: There is not much notable or atypical to point out about Galore's radio communication equipment here - so can I point you to the incredible gold cuffs on her outfit instead?
Context: Sneaking around Goldfinger's ranch, Bond spies on a henchman who is himself spying on Goldfinger's meeting with a number of mafiosos in the room above.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments: Again, apparently Goldfinger comes from the Dr. No school of video surveillance (see slide 18 above) where you simply must have multiple screens of the exact same view, only one is angled maybe two inches to the left. Oh, and it must be a "video" feed that is actually high-quality, fine-grain black-and-white film stock.
Context: On the day of the heist, members of Goldfinger's ...private army? (who are these people) get word on their portable receiver from Pussy Galore's pilot troupe that the soldiers at Fort Knox have been successfully neutralized.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Q Branch
Comments: Given we're right at the time of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, I guess it's all pretty accurate for Goldfinger to have acquired a military-grade "backpack" radio transceiver of the kind that I associate with war films and footage from Vietnam. Such portable units would've been still generally considered way too expensive and combersome for personal/civilian use beyond the most die-hard radio hobbyists.
Fun fact: did you know the term "walkie-talkie" actually started out referring to larger models like this (since you could at least walk with them on your back or otherwise strapped to your person), while "handie-talkie" referred to the much smaller, purely handheld devices we actually think of now?
Context: Goldfinger's convoy careens through town on their way to Fort Knox, passing an era-appropriate (figurative) radio shack.
Radio Shack or Q Branch? Radio Shack
Comments: The production did in fact do some exterior filming on location near Fort Knox, and this building in Muldraugh, Kentucky is still there (though now sadly, a toy store, rather than a television/electronics shop).