Fans of the old Get Smart television show will remember the famous shoe phone used in the series, but an Adelaide man has managed to design a device that operates just as it does on television.
Paul Gardner-Stephen, a 32-year old post-doctoral fellow in bio-informatics at Adelaide’s Flinders University, made the device as a prop for a drama presentation, and has received so much demand for the device he is considering selling it.
The device works by embedding a Motorola V620 in one shoe and a blue tooth headset in the other, with hatches in the heels to hold the devices.
“It’s surprising; your first thought is it’s completely impractical, but it’s actually not that bad – the phone rings, you slip off the shoe, you open the heel and press the button and you’re talking in around the same time it would take to fumble in a bag and pull the phone out,” he says.
“I’ve had a couple of bemused looks, but it turns out that universities are quite resilient to the unusual – I’ve walked several hundred metres outside on campus talking into the shoe and no one’s really paid any attention,” he says.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
