Before There Was Apple, There Was Bond (And Q): 50 Years of Impeccably Cool Gadgets

The James Bond movie franchise celebrates its 50th birthday this year, and the world’s favorite secret agent will blow out the candles with the Nov. 9 release of Skyfall, the 23rd Bond film. The old saying goes that behind every great man is a woman, but there’s one enduring character who is arguably more helpful than Bond’s scantily clad femme fatales: Q. One trailer for Skyfall shows Bond (Daniel Craig, in this incarnation) being presented with a gun featuring a palm-print identity checker so that it can only be fired by the man with a license to kill.