On 2025-11-11, it is five years since James Bond celebrated his 100th birthday. I will use the opportunity to mention some facts, mostly Canadian. Herschel Saltzman (1915 – 1994), known as Harry, is best known as a co-producer of the first nine Bond films, from Dr No (1962) to The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). Saltzman was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, but raised in Saint John, New Brunswick for the first seven years of his life. Shortly after World War II began, he enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force in Vancouver. He received a medical discharge in Trenton, Ontario in 1943, and joined the U.S. Psychological Warfare Bureau, because he wanted to get back to Europe. In 1945, Saltzman helped Lin Yutang (1895 – 1976) establish UNESCO’s film division. Later, in Paris, Saltzman became associated with Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette ( 1873 – 1954), known mononymously as Colette, a French author, mime, actress and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her 1944 novella Gigi. Saltzman working as a talent scout for European productions on stage, television and in film, but gradually became more successful producing stage plays.
In 1958, Saltzman had set up the production company Lowndes Productions, but he did not use it for film production until 1965, and used it for eight productions thereafter, among them his three Harry Palmer films with Michael Caine: The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967). The company’s last production came out in 1988, and was dissolved in 1992.
Harry Palmer, the Len Deighton (1929 – ) character, celebrated his 100th birthday sometime in 2022 or 2023, no specific date is given. I contemplated publishing this weblog post on Deighton’s 100th birthday, but planning years into the future is not always wise when one is an old man. Thus, I chose five years after my previous discussion of Harry Palmer, which was on 2020-11-11.
I have now rewatched the Harry Palmer films, but not in chronological order. I have seen them before, but not for many years. Thus, much of the content surprises me, especially the introductions. It is almost as if, I have never seen them. Then there are relatively insignificant scenes that have etched themselves into my memory.
The first one I rewatched was Billion-Dollar Brain (1967), the third Harry Palmer film, with Michael Caine (1933 – ) and directed by Ken Russell (1927 – 2011). Some of it was filmed at Honeywell’s computer facilities, possibly in Charlotte, North Carolina. It shows what a main frame computer looked like in the 1960s. Helsinki portrayed itself as the capital of Finland, while the city of Porvoo, 50 km east of Helsinki, took on the role of Riga, at the time in the Soviet Union. Pinewood studios about 30 km west of London, England, took on the task of portraying other locations, including a Texas ranch.
For lack of a more encompassing term, here are some technologies that fascinated me in the films. I have deliberately not indicated which films these technologies are from, so that people can enjoy them all and be surprised when the techologies show up.
Village Swings
Kyläkeinu in Finnish with kylä = village and keinu = swing. In Estonian it is külakiik, divided the same way küla = village and kiik = swing. It can best be understood by examining the photo below, believed to be taken somewhere in the 1950s. The village swing is a large swing designed for multiple users, including adults, traditionally built on village communal land in Finland and Estonia.
In 2025-05, Alasdair and I visited the Baltic island of Hiiumaa, in Estonia. We stayed in the village of Jausa. About 8 km to the south west, in the village of Harju, there is suposed to be such a swing. I could not find it. Some days later (2025-05-30) we were on the island of Saaremaa, were we did find one, but it was nothing like what I was expecting. See below, and the post about our trip to Estonia.
Snowmobiles
The B12 has nothing to do with a vitamin, but the number of passengers the Bombardier snowmobile could carry. Before snowmobiles, people had to rely on sleds and cutters, such as the one shown below. Most could not carry twelve people.
In 1934-01, a blizzard prevented Joseph-Armand Bombardier (1907 – 1964) from reaching a hospital in time to save his two-year-old son, Yvon, who died from appendicitis complicated by peritonitis.
Bombardier was a mechanic who dreamed of building a vehicle that could float on snow. In 1935, in a repair shop in Valcourt, Quebec, he designed and produced the first snowmobile using a drive system he developed that revolutionized travel in snow and swampy conditions. It was equipped with front skis and rear tracks. Alternatively, the front skis could be removed and replaced with front wheels. In 1937, he patented and sold 12 of the 7-passenger B7 Auto-Neige = snow bus/ coach. They were used in rural Quebec to take children to school, carry freight, deliver mail and as ambulances. In 1941, Bombardier opened a factory in Valcourt. In 1951, the wooden body was replaced with a steel body.
Fluoroscope
The shoe-fitting fluoroscope was an X-ray fluoroscope machine installed in shoe stores from the 1920s until about 1970, in the stores I frequented. The device was a metal construction covered in finished wood, approximately 1.2 m tall in the shape of short column, with a ledge with an opening through which the standing customer (adult or child) would put their feet and look through a viewing porthole at the top of the fluoroscope down at the X-ray view of the feet and shoes. Two other viewing portholes on either side enabled the parent and a sales assistant to observe the toes being wiggled to show how much room for the toes there was inside the shoe. The bones of the feet were clearly visible, as was the outline of the shoe, including the stitching around the edges.
The machines were sold in Canada and many other countries,
In the second half of the 20th century, growing awareness of radiation hazards and increasingly stringent regulations forced their gradual phasing out. They were widely used particularly when buying shoes for children, whose shoe size continually changes until adulthood.
Parking Meter
It has gone many decades since I plugged a parking meter with nickles and dimes. These days there are not many places where we use paid parking. Most of the time when we do it involves a camera taking a photo of our front licence plate. After shopping, but before we enter the parking lot to drive our car away, we find a parking payment machine. We enter our plate identification, and pay the requested sum using a bank card. I am told that some, usually younger people, pay with apps on their phones.
Pay Telephone
Pay phones were shown in the original Harry Palmer films, but that was part of the technology makeup at the time. My worst experience with a pay phone in a film involved Blade Runner (1982), an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). The film is set in a future Los Angeles of 2019. It is so dystopian, that people use pay phones!
Band Shell
King’s Square in Saint John lies in its uptown, established in 1785, a year following the formation of New Brunswick. The bandshell was a gift from the City Coronet Band in 1909. The publicity blurb described the square as a serene retreat and a living museum, in a bustling city. I don’t think any of the adjectives used apply. The bandshell was an urban retreat for pigeons. The question that plagued me, while there, was how the musicians entered the second floor of the bandshell?
Ubiquitous cigarette smoke
Despite having smoked into the 1970s, I was shocked at the amount of smoke that appeared in these movies. I tried to look at some data about smoking and found: Considering a conservative value, cigarette smoking worldwide, releases about 22 Gg of nicotine and about 135 Gg of particulate matter into the atmosphere each year. See: P. Jacob, M.L. Goniewicz, C.M. Havel, S.F. Schick, N.L. Benowitz Nicotelline: A proposed biomarker and environmental tracer for particulate matter derived from tobacco smoke Chem. Res. Toxicol., 26 (2013), pp. 1615-1631. The article referred to the quantities in millions of kilograms, which seems a strange way to express mass, when the metric system uses prefixes so: 1 000 g = 1 kg, 1 000 kg = 1 Mg, 1 000 Mg = 1 Gg. Thus, I converted the published values to Gg.
The country with the fewest smokers is Nigeria, with 2.8% of the population = 5.2% of males, and 0.4% of females. In terms of other countries, including those with people who receive weblog notifications, the values in ascending order are: Canada = 10.7%; New Zealand = 10.9%; Australia = 12.0%; Norway = 12.2%; China = 22.9% and USA = 23.6%. The country with the most smokers is Nauru with 46.7% of the population = 47.8% of males and 45.6% of females. I am uncertain if these values include the use of snuff = snus (Scandinavian). From my perspective, this is a major health issue.
