I can't help but notice that Philips Scopes seem to be the go to-items when it comes to fill laboratories in movies and TV-Shows.
Yesterday I was watching a video with the most memorable Q-Moments from James Bond and noticed a PM3350 (or smiliar) Combiscope in one scene.
Got me thinking that they pop up fairly often or at least stick out more than others.
From memory I've got these so far:
- Analog Scope made by Philips in Stargate Atlantis Episode (the one with the asteroid-base from the second season, I believe).
- PM335x Combiscope in:
- James Bond Movie from the 80s
- Netflix-Movie Spectral
- At least one more movie that I just can't place right now
What Scopes or other T&M-Equipment have you noticed in movies or TV-Shows? Or games - In GTA 5 there's at least one Scope that looks kinda like a low end TDS-Scope from around the mid 2000s
A Stanford Research SR510 lock in amplifier on the Big Bang Theory.
Looked at Spectral again - Kinda goofy lab with random equipment and non-connected Scopes that double as control-monitors for crazy lasers, 40€ Bench Power Supplies from ebay in Super High Tech Death-Ray developing lab, Closeup-Shots of Combiscope from the 80s in lab in the near future.
Funniest part is when the protagonist turns the timebase-knob and thereby turns the laz0r on that melts a block of ice
Not T&M gear but still made me cringe:
https://youtu.be/XGdbaEDVWp0?t=52s - those tape decks don't... uh... have a vacuum column and I love the random A/V gear they put into the "computer room" as props...
I was surprised by a spectrum analyzer inside a van in “The Wire”
And in a hideous Spanish TV series called “El Barco” the radio transceiver was actually a digital multimeter. With the visible legend even!
Not T&M gear but still made me cringe: https://youtu.be/XGdbaEDVWp0?t=52s - those tape decks don't... uh... have a vacuum column and I love the random A/V gear they put into the "computer room" as props...
I noticed at 1.04 my Rockwell calculator that I had in 1975+
I never saw the end production - but I was working in a Tandy store here in Sydney many years ago when someone came in and asked the boss for some products with lots of buttons which they could use to dress up the interior of a spacecraft. IIRC they walked out with a bagful of timers like this one:
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The rebel lab/computer room from The Hunger Games (part 3).
Some tube gear like Tektronix stuff, what appears to be some old reference standards/calibrators, and other antique goodies.
Much of the prop movie stuff comes from Apex Electronics or similar place. I am waiting for something from the many upon many piles of stuff I have dumped or traded there to make it into a movie. Being most of it was obsolete or otherwise unsaleable parts from our inventory, and most of it custom to us, most of it would be easy to recognize. I got a picture from my friend who works there of a bunch of stuff a prop house was buying and some of our stuff was in it. No clue if it was ever used in a movie though.
I watched some of the original Battlestar Galactica series a while back on Netflix, and noticed that they had a lot of Tektronix TM-500 gear in the sets.
-Pat
Air Crash Disasters....or one something similar.
Always an old'ish Tek CRO in the background with NO signal, just doing it's thing....just flatline sweeping on probably 100ms/div.
Like it adds credibility to the scene.
Took me a while to find it.....I supplied a good # of props in this NZ TV advertisement:
https://youtu.be/loon0nHy-MMIt was shot just down the road from where member Dubbie works.
Early SDS2304 @ 0.05
One for vintage oscilloscope aficionados, the British made Roband RO50, makes a number of appearances in "The Prisoner" (1967).
Galactica used a lot of 500 series, many Tek XY vectorscopes and a bunch of Tek 4051 or similar vector graphics programmable terminals.
Steve
For some reason, every laboratory scene, no matter what type of lab, has an oscilloscope displaying Lissajous figures on it. Sometimes there are cables connected to the 'scope's inputs ...
Air Crash Disasters....or one something similar.
Air Crash Investigation? The same guys that always wave around a reel of tape when investigating the black box
Whenever there's some sort of wormhole involved in a sci-fi, there's often what looks like a Smith chart on a screen somewhere.
I remember years ago, when some character in "Days of our lives" was in dire health straits.
The "heart monitor" was an old Tektronix 545B apparently stolen from the Network techs.
On another occasion, on "Doctor Who" the Doctor was fiddling with this very "high tech" looking cylindrical device with controls sticking out of every part of it.
Many years later, I saw the very same type of device sitting on a shelf in TVW's Camera maintenance area.
Apparently Philips supplied this device which was never used.
The "Beeb" obviously found a better use for it.
Not quite the same thing, but related:-
In the old "Battlestar Galactica", one episode had two of the main characters apparently on "present day" Earth.
They were equipped with motorcycles which were "supposed to blend in", with the " in joke" being that they looked too spectacular & futuristic to do so.
In fact, they looked positively "dowdy" compared to the then current Suzuki Katana.
All the TV News crew gear that was in the Movie "The Nugget" was mine.....it was the scene where all the news crews went to his house after finding the big nugget.......it was all old stuff out of my retired gear warehouse.....even got in the credits lol...
I also have a bit of the gear used in the (Actual) Apollo 11 mission......Monitors and tech gear etc etc.
All the TV News crew gear that was in the Movie "The Nugget" was mine.....it was the scene where all the news crews went to his house after finding the big nugget.......it was all old stuff out of my retired gear warehouse.....even got in the credits lol...
I also have a bit of the gear used in the (Actual) Apollo 11 mission......Monitors and tech gear etc etc.
Nice!
From what has been presented so far, I very much doubt there are more than two or three movies out there that use lab equipment properly
kpop. 4Minute - 'WHY'
'Why' is there a scope (powered off, but they adjust it) and what looks like some old chip programmer?
What movies DO use test gear correctly? The Dish maybe?
...
What movies DO use test gear correctly? The Dish maybe?
Screenshot from Apollo 13:
'Why' is there a scope (powered off, but they adjust it) and what looks like some old chip programmer?
What movies DO use test gear correctly? The Dish maybe?
The "dish" had a lot of gear brought in for the shoot....older stuff, but some of the stuff in there is still used today.........for the record I have played Cricket on the dish.......back before the upgrade to small mesh on the reflective surface.......they got a bit fussy when the new aerial cabin went up and the better mesh......dents in the mesh dont go real well with the higher freq's..........I also thought I was going to be there forever, as I got stuck in one of the manhole ports in the centre of the dish.......I eventually wiggled myself in as got out lol........the good old days of dish rides, you could even ride the sketchy elevator up one of the legs.......I imagine OHS would have a fit now........there were some awesome people out there.....very very smart.
I watched 'Ghosts of Mars' the other night. Slap center of the 'dashboard' of their high tech bullet train was a huge unidentifiable old tube based scope, round domed white screen and all!
Iiic, it was displaying a bright sinewave. Maybe they needed it to be EMP proof.