Get Smart: Encyclopedia II - Get Smart - Gadgets

Get Smart - Gadgets

Smart would communicate with CONTROL using a rotary telephone concealed in his shoe. While it is decades ahead of its time in real life, the need to take off his shoe to use it and the loud bell among other design flaws lead to various humorously awkward situations. The term "shoe phone" has returned to currency as a slang expression for a handheld cellular telephone.

Smart would always insist on following the rules and, when in the Chief's office, would insist on speaking under the Cone of Silence. One of the show's recurring gags, the Cone of Silence was two transparent plastic hemispheres which were electrically lowered on top of Smart and the Chief, and which invariably malfunctioned, such that the characters wound up shouting in order to be understood by each other. At least one time, the device worked so badly that an outside observer, who could hear everything spoken inside, had to relay messages to the people inside because they couldn't hear them themselves. The 1989 reunion movie revealed that Max and 99 had purchased a surplus Cone and placed it over their bed; it still didn't work.

The AMT Corporation, a major producer of model car kits, produced a replica of the Sunbeam Tiger roadster Smart drove in the opening credits. Complete with a cache of hidden weapons, it is the only kit of the Tiger produced to date and is highly coveted by collectors. The start of the 1968 season put Smart in a Buick Opel GT with a variation of the shoe phone, namely a giant rotary telephone dial covering the steering wheel.

Communication devices have been hidden in other contraptions: once, the chief used the hour and minute hands of a clock (detached from the clock face) to communicate; once, Max had to use the Bunsen burner that the phone was hidden in, with the flame as the microphone, but he had to put Code P into effect, and he kept "disconnecting" when saying "P".

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Gadgets", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki