RSS Blogster - Top Articles

feature: True story: the making of the Terminator's laser-sighted .45 pistol

2010-03-09T21:30:07-07:00

One of the most striking images from The Terminator was the weapon he carried and used in his first attempt on Sarah Connor's life: the .45 Longslide, with laser sighting. Who can forget the scene in the gun shop? The gun was likewise such a striking presence on screen it was used on the film's poster. There are T-shirts dedicated to the gun.

Terminator was released in 1984, and while laser sights on weapons are common now, when the film was first shown the red laser was able to communicate something subtle and powerful to the audience: this is a machine, deadly accurate and futuristic. It made the Terminator seem other-worldly and terrifying. At a party during CES, Deputy Editor Jon Stokes and I bumped into some representatives from SureFire, a company that specializes in tactical flashlights. We talked about some of our favorite moments with technology in cinema, and The Terminator came up.

"We created that laser!" I was told. They told me the gentleman who built the prop was named Ed Reynolds, and he was still with the company. More than a little jazzed about bumping into a fun part of film history, we knew we had to get the full story behind the Terminator's gun.

Read the comments on this post

Newegg terminates supplier relationship over counterfeit Core i7 CPUs

2010-03-08T17:58:00-07:00

PowerHouse eMonitor lets you manage power use down to the circuit

2010-03-08T12:28:00-07:00

Jalalabad's Fab Fi: How Junk Was Turned Into a High-Speed Wireless Network [Wi-Fi]

2010-03-04T17:00:00-07:00

Members of MIT's Bits and Atoms lab visited Afghanistan some time ago. While there, they showed locals how to turn pieces of board, wire, a plastic tub and some cans into reflectors for a wireless network. The result? Fab Fi.

The project resulted in 25 simultaneous live nodes being up in the city of Jalalabad and residents being able to enjoy a stable connection all over the place. Locals are even expanding the network by adding more reflectors and routers. There are some difficulties in actually obtaining the routers though, but the MIT crew—now dubbed the Jalalabad Fab Lab—are helping resolve those by shipping routers over.

On the surface this is a tale of some clever University MacGyvers, a small place in Afghanistan, and a makeshift Wi-Fi network, but the greater idea is that people came together to provide a new method of communication to an area where Skype calls and quick Google searches weren't a common luxury. Sure, now the area is exposed to time wasters and Internet porn, but it's also been provided some new opportunities to learn and explore. [Free Range International via Futurismic via Boing Boing]