Three Days of The Condor - Technological Aspects

Technological Aspects

Three Days of the Condor was an early example of the "techno-thriller" which later came to maturity in the 1990s with films such as Mission Impossible and Enemy of the State. In the early scenes one can see a book being scanned by a beam and presumably digitized for storage in the computer of the CIA substation research office. While at least one scene shows punch-card terminals, most scenes involving computers show dumb-terminals, including in the administrative office of Higgins. There is also an elaborate sequence in which Redford manipulates a Bell telephone exchange to confound CIA tracing equipment (a plot-device used in subsequent films) and in which he digitizes a recording of dialing tones to extract the dialed number. Several shots in the movie show early modems being used.