Interesting

Originally posted by Kewpie
I went through metal detectors in European and Asian airports in 1985. There was no shortage of terrorist activity back then - IRA, Baader-Meinhof come to mind.

Wow

Originally posted by RBHILL
In season 4 of Seinfeld they go through medal detectors at the airport. This is in the early 90's. I thought they only started doing it after sept. 2001.

Metal detectors are for stopping anyone from bringing something onto a plane they shouldn't have, like guns for example.

A plane was bombed when a passenger brought onboard an explosive device, and other attempts to do the same were foiled for one reason or another. One time we got lucky and the bomb only hurt the bomber when it went off.

There have been other instances of terrorism, but 9/11 stands out in our memories because that's when it happened here by foreign nationals. We've had domestic acts of terrorism happen here, but because they were internal and didn't involve some other country they don't qualify as 'acts of war'. When we found out who was responsible for the attack on 9/11 we knew right away if it was an act of war or not. Well, most of us knew what it was... not everyone understood what was happening. Some still don't.

Terrorism in general has been going on for quite a long time, and against U.S. owned or controlled targets, but the reality of international terrorism didn't begin to register with many U.S. citizens until it happened on U.S. soil.

Originally posted by RBHILL
Wow

"A series of aircraft hijackings led the United States in 1972 to adopt metal detector technology to screen airline passengers, initially using magnetometers that were originally designed for logging operations to detect spikes in trees.[10] The Finnish company Outokumpu adapted mining metal detectors in the 1970s, still housed in a large cylindrical pipe, to make a commercial walk-through security detector.[11] The development of these systems continued in a spin off company and systems branded as Metor Metal Detectors evolved in the form of the rectangular gantry now standard in airports. In common with the developments in other uses of metal detectors both alternating current and pulse systems are used, and the design of the coils and the electronics has moved forward to improve the discrimination of these systems. In 1995 systems such as the Metor 200 appeared with the ability to indicate the approximate height of the metal object above the ground, enabling security personnel to more rapidly locate the source of the signal. Smaller hand held metal detectors are also used to locate a metal object on a person more precisely."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_detector

Originally posted by RBHILL
In season 4 of Seinfeld they go through medal detectors at the airport. This is in the early 90's. I thought they only started doing it after sept. 2001.

This is why Americans need to travel more 😛

America changed something between 2007 and 2008 as well, I went both times from Dublin in those years but had to go through more security/immigration BS in 2008.