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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

Because flashing circuit boards are so often used by terrorists?

Yeah, man, with big red flashing LED clock faceplates and wires of various distinct colors where you have to know the exact color wire to cut in order to deactivate the device. And when that happens, the clock has to stop at exactly 1 second remaining.

Is there some movie that's source of the cliche of needing to defuse a bomb by cutting the wire with the right color? This is so common a cliche that it must have come from somewhere.

And while I'm asking random questions, where did the cliche of the anarchist with the spherical black bomb with a fuse coming out the top come from? This icon was used for system errors on the original Mac, but it must be way older than that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_(symbol)

I think it may have originated with Wargames (1983 movie starring Matthew Modine and a pretty good movie at that), but what do I know: I'm old and confused.

I think you mean Matthew Broderick. Anyway the "cut the blue wire" cliche is a lot older than that. I think I remember it from old Mission Impossible episodes on TV when I was a kid, and those were produced in the late '60s/early '70s.

According to TVTropes, under Wire Dilemma, Get Smart also had an instance of it around the same time, which leads me to believe that it was a widespread trope even then.

There is an idea that it originated in WWII, when some German bombs featured overly complicated designs that purposely didn't explode all the time, because a live bomb is arguably worse than an already exploded bomb.

Re the spherical bomb: an example from 1946: Tom & Jerry, Trap Happy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyMfR_yoEdE#t=1m59

In 1922, Buster Keaton's "Cops" features a bomb-throwing anarchist: http://images.greencine.com/images/article/keaton-bomb-2.jpg (Buster unknowingly lights his cigarette with it)

And 1919, a 'Red Scare' cartoon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Come_unto_me,_ye_opprest....

But this has got to be older, as this type of throwing bomb was obsolete in the early 1900s. There's the Haymarket affair (1886): http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/haymarket/just...

I'm guessing that's the incident that ties this bomb to political activists. But the design is a lot older; the badge of Napoleon's grenadier guards is an image of this type of bomb, but the round throwing bomb is way, way older: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ming_Dynasty_fragmentatio...

Recognisably the same bomb, from the 14th century.

The police probably watch too much bad Hollywood movies.

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