British Science Fiction Technology

Smart Watches

The British children’s TV show Thunderbirds, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, is set in the 2060s and follows the Tracy family. They happen to be ‘International Rescue’, a secret organisation that saves people’s lives across the globe. It was first broadcast in 1965, with a remake and multiple films produced over the years.

To save people from some precarious situations, they use state of the art technology from hypersonic rocket planes to submersibles. They even have a space station!

One piece of tech that they use is a smart wristwatch, called the Personal Intercall Wrist Communicator. It allowed the members of International Rescue instant and covert communications to each other. It was hidden by a normal watch face to keep it safe.

To film this was a bit of a struggle. The technology for small video monitors on watches didn’t exist. Filming illusion was required which was explained in an interview with Gerry Anderson. They used a very large model of an arm with a wrist watch and used a screen to be the face of the watch. By back projecting onto the screen they could then show the video messages from the characters.

Today the size of the technology needed has shrunk enough to fit everything from a processor to battery inside a watch. Once linked to our phones, we can listen to music, track runs and exercise, answer calls from across the globe, monitor our health and more. Some watches can even video call, so if you ever felt like recreating an episode of Thunderbirds, now you can!

VR Headsets

Red Dwarf is a classic British comedy about a mining ship whose crew have been killed by a radiation leak leaving only one man alive. David Lister survived by being imprisoned in a stasis booth as punishment for having a pet cat onboard. He is brought out of stasis three million years later when the radiation inside the ship had dissipated. Onboard he is accompanied by the ship's computer Holly, Cat who is a descendent of his pet cat, and Arnold Rimmer who is a neurotic hologram of a dead colleague. Kryten, who is a Series 4000 Mechanoid, joined them later on in Series 3.

During their many escapades, they manage to occasionally find some downtime to relax. Video games are a great way to relax and being 3 million years in the future, they don’t use consoles and controllers but Artificial Reality headsets. Also known as Total Immersion Video Games, there are gloves and other attachments to help with inputs and feedback within the game. These headsets use electrodes which have been implanted into the brain for complete immersion and tailor the game to the player. As you can imagine this doesn’t always go to plan with the group sometimes getting stuck inside these games. Using their err… wits and luck they manage to escape out of these games and back into normal reality.

While we don’t have their headsets we do have Virtual Reality, thankfully without those brain electrodes! VR headsets have actually been around since before the Apollo Moon landings, with varying levels of success. The first Head-Mounted Display (HMD) connected to a computer was in 1968 and called the Sword of Damocles. Harvard professor Ivan Sutherland and his student Bob Sproull worked together to create the headset. Due to the weight of the headset, it was suspended from the ceiling with the user strapped in underneath.

Today, after various fits and starts we now have VR headsets that work effectively with incredible graphics. We have lightweight and comfortable materials, smaller computer boards and wireless connections. These VR headsets are used in many industries from gaming to the military. It is an effective and sometimes cheaper way of training a large number of people especially in environments that are tricky to recreate, like space. It can even help to develop expensive technology, like NASA's robotic arms. If you do have a go, just try not to fall off the sofa like me…