Code Cylinders

The imperial agent outfit I’ve chosen to copy is very much like the Imperial Officer uniforms of the original trilogy. In the original Star Wars trilogy, the “Code Cylinders” in the top pockets of the Imperial Officers were RA Stephens 6665-110101 Dosimeters which have become rare and expensive.

Fortunately as the SWTOR era is so far before ANH, and the code cylinders in game are barely more than a silverish blur, I could pretty much do what I wanted, but I still wanted to get close to the original props.

I was lucky enough to find some surplus dosimeters with the same type of clip that was used in the original trilogy. These are marked 6665-99-911-0410 and are either RA Stephens or Centronic (who bought RA Stephens in the early 90’s) and are very close in appearance to the ANH dosimeters (missing just a blue “button” on the top and a crenelated silver bezel). I decided just to leave them as they are though I may modify them to be closer to the ANH ones at a later date.

These devices are actually pretty cool; looking through the lens at the purple end lets you see a graph of how much radiation you’ve been exposed to. Mine both are off the end of the scale as internally they work on the principal that the more the readout wire loses charge, the more radiation you’ve been exposed to. They lose their charge with time too which is why mine are reading off the scale (I hope).

You can get a device to charge them back up so they work, but it’s expensive and as much as having the full set would make my collection brain happy, my practical brain can think of better things to take up space in my house.