Ring me on the shoe phone, chief

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.