Ten innovations inspired by Star Trek

In the early years of the last century, a new generation of scientists was inspired by the mysteries of the world around them. Einstein, Bohr and others spent the rest of their lives engaged in a debate about the nature of the atom.

In the latter part of the 20^th century, budding scientists had it far easier. They had Star Trek for inspiration. From warp fields to flat-screen TVs, Star Trek boldly took its viewers where no programme had taken us before. Among those fans, of course, were the inventors, scientists and all-round boffins of today.

As the new Star Trek film prepares to land at a cinema near you, it’s time to take stock of some of those “far-fetched” ideas that we now take for granted.

 
Now, could someone get to work on synthehol, please?

 

 

1  The flip-top mobile phone
For a generation that grew up flicking imaginary communicators and saying “Beam me up, Scotty”, the now near-ubiquitous flip-top mobile phone was the answer to our prayers.

2 The sound of automatic doors
The first electrically operated sliding automatic doors were fitted in Texas in 1960. They ran on noisy rubber wheels. Fifty years later, all of the world’s sliding doors open with a swooooosh. Where do you suppose that idea came from?

3. Flat-screen TVs, touch-screen computers, video-conferencing          
We laughed when we saw them. Television sets could never be that small, computers could never be that responsive. In 2009, we’re all fighting over the latest half-inch thick Sony and Samsung LCDs, then wondering how we plug our iPhones into them. Business types, meanwhile, are conducting transglobal negotiations in much the same manner as Kirk did with the Klingons.

4. The first space shuttle
Nasa called its first space shuttle (above) the Enterprise, following a letter-writing campaign by fans in 1976. The ship was used in test flights but was never truly spaceworthy.

 

5. The transporter beam
Although the original owes its existence to the show’s minuscule budget, that hasn’t stopped real scientists from trying to make one. In 2007, a new record was set for quantum teleportation, when data was beamed 89 miles from the island of La Palma to Tenerife.

 

6. The tricorder
Dr McCoy’s original all-in-one medical diagnostic tool was designed by one of the unsung heroes of Star Trek, Wah Ming Chang, who also came up with the look for the Communicator. Although no such thing yet exists, we take heart from the fact that every single PDA on the planet looks like a Tricorder, and from this news article, which claims that PDAs can now be made to work as full-on medical scanners.

7. The Hypospray
You try and tell me that there’s no Star Trek influence in the final design of jet injectors, the special hypodermics used for mass immunisation programmes. Go on, try.

 

8. Warp drive
On the face of it, this is one of Star Trek’s most unlikely technologies. However, it does have roots in quantum physics, in which components of an atom do hop from place to place without, seemingly, touching a point in between (see the excellent book Quantum by Manjit Kumar for details). Yes, I know. It puzzled Einstein, too. And it seems to have defeated NASA, whose six-year Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program was cancelled in 2002. Unless, of course, they succeeded. And fell through into a parallel universe.

Blu-Ray Laser Phaser! - Free videos are just a click away

9. The phaser
Yep, it’s the US military again, and they've got a big laser gun. 

 

If you have more classic tastes, then you can take apart your PlayStation 3 and turn a plastic toy phaser into the real thing. Just like the man in the video above.

 

10. The cloaking device
According to a 2007 report at Networkworld.com, Purdue University engineers have created something that looks like a spiky hairbrush that has the ability to “bend” light around any object being cloaked. We are told to expect an invisible tank by 2012. Above is how we imagine it will look in the dark.  

 

For more on the new Star Trek film, head to the Blockbuster Buzz, or read the full Times review.

Comments

[Roger M. Rogalski]

Pathetic. All but grinning and cringging to the primitive, trained but never. educated user.

[terence patrick hewett]

Everything is older than what you think. All the above have their antecedents. There was a transporter beam in the film The Forbidden Planet. For Ray Guns look no further than Dan Dare Pilot of the Future or Superman. This is very lightweight patronising stuff.

[Don Tveter]

For warp drive look up Miguel Alcubierre. He came up with the idea but there is no known way to build it.

[Bev Shaw]

Lighten up guys its called humour.

[Unindicted Co-Conspirator]

There were hyposprays several years before Star Trek.
I received a polio vaccine that way around 1963.
And they looked the same then as they do now, just a bit smaller.
Because form really does follow function!
So yes, I'm saying flat out there wasn't any Star Trek influence in their design!

[Fenton Queue]

Above is how we imagine it will look in the dark.

ROFLMFAO. Priceless! :-)

[Jeremiah]

Nicola Tesla was aruably the greatest inventor in history.Had his works not been supressed then our understanding of physics would have expanded beyond all recognition; and yes, one day teleportation will be possible.

[Tristian Hamilton]

There are plenty of antecedents, however primitive, in other places. What makes Trek such a portent is that they gathered these concepts, created connections to resolve compatability and outright invented bravely. I am proud of Trek, their invention and willingness to take on subjects that were less than easy to bring to the screen. Bravo.

[john frakes]

I'm quite shocked and disappointed having read this article. I would never have expected such a poorly researched, badly written, pop sci-fi piece to appear in The Times. But maybe that's what Gene Roddenberry predicted...the decline of standards.

It's journalism Jim, but not as we know it.

[Chris]

Tricorder
Checkout the work of Benveniste which linked particular frequencies to specific diseases

Warp Drive
Checkout Carl Jungs time bilocation experience at Ravenna

Remote Viewing opens a whole new chapter!
Remember that an expert is someone who doesn't know that he doesn't know.

[Eugene]

When will they get to the beamer, so that we can beam Bush up anywhere, I don't care where?

[Paul S]

The effect used in Forbidden Planet was not a transporter beam. It was a way to protect the crew when the ship went into hyperdrive--although it looks somewhat similar to a Star Trek transporter, no one goes anywhere.

[Dave Clemo]

Mobile phones? Try "Space Cadet" by Robert Heinlein written in 1948.
Ditto in flight TV showing adverts.
Philip K Dick wrote about TV sets in airline seat backs in a book published in 1955.
Arthur C Clarke did the science for TV satellites in 1947.
How many NASA and other scientists read Sci-fi in their youth?

[starling]

Weren't jet injectors a failure because they spread blood-borne disease?

[John Davis]

Was Gene Roddenberry awesome or what? He clearly had a vision!

[Erika]

Typical comments from a bunch of boring, humorless engineer types void of any creativity. I liked this article.

[James]

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

[jmndos]

Nigel Kendall is a retard.
Its not flat screen, its flat panel....there is a LARGE difference.

[Terry]

Unlikely.

[Rob Gibson]

"Typical comments from a bunch of boring, humorless engineer types void of any creativity. I liked this article."

Ditto

[webwalker]

I'm especially disappointed in the Times over this puff piece. Even leaving aside all of the Golden Age SF in print, the homegrown Doctor Who was doing teleportation (called TrasMAT on that programme) in the sixties, several years before Trek.

Let's face it: Roddenberry wasn't a genius, he was merely ahead of his time, though not as far ahead of his time as many other, all of whom envisioned these technologies long before Gene popularised them. Perhaps THAT is what the article should have been about: SF in general, and Trek in particular as a vehicle for PopSCI of far reaching ideas. Who knew what a Tachyon was before the 90s? Doctor Who was talking about Tachyons in 1979 and discussing the science accurately, if simply!

[Paul]

"Fifty years later, all of the world’s sliding doors open with a swooooosh."

All of sliding doors in the world, yeah right. Don't know where you're from but it doesn't represent the world.

[hatim]

I am actually very interested in the Enterprise Computer's voice based command system, one would think we would have computers which would talk to us naturally.

It would be one of the areas I would be looking into during my Masters thesis.

[Marilyn]

Article is fun ... as the show was ... but who would have ever thought Captain Kirk could turn into Denny Crane? lol

[Mike Bender]

Dick Tracy was a comic series in which the detective had a radio built into his watch.
The following is from WIKI....

"In January 1946, Gould changed Dick Tracy forever with the introduction of the 2-Way Wrist Radio after a visit to inventor Al Gross. This seminal communications device, worn as a wristwatch by Tracy and members of the police force, became one of the strip's most immediately recognizable icons, and can be thought of as an early precursor of later technological developments, such as cellular phones. The 2-Way Wrist Radio was eventually upgraded to a 2-Way Wrist TV in 1964. This development also led to the introduction of an important supporting character, Diet Smith, an eccentric industrialist who financed the development of this equipment."

But hey, I still think Star Trek was awesome and far ahead for its day.

[Ian Kemmish]

8. If you want to understand quantum physics read George Gamow's "Mr Tompkins" books. In particular, the chapter "Fuzzy Tigers" will help you understand that particles don't "bounce around", they just exist in a probabilistic fog.

9. Phasers are NOT lasers. Not only does the dialogue (I think) make this clear in some episodes, but in an episode where time is stretched, you can see that they fired something physical. Possibly charged particles.

[steve]

I liked star trek if the 1960s because it was gloriously wrong in some of its future thinking, and the sets wobbled but IT DID have some great ideas, and people have written books and TV programs about it, and the newer it gets (I.E. Star Trek TNG and DS9 and Voyager) the more futuristic and distant the technology becomes.

Professor Laurence Krauss wrote a book called "the physics of Star Trek" which broke down a lot of the Sci-fi mumbo jumbo.

James May (BBC Top Gear presenter) on his own program took a look at site-to-site transportation "it was perceived because the budget for the special effects and props was all used up elsewhere" and "even the best and fastest internet connection would still take 15,000 million years to download and transport you to another location."

True the flip communicator inspired Motorola, there are other less visible designs influenced by Star Trek, and it wasn't just Gene Roddenberry, it was also some of the best sci-fi writers of the day.

[Assimilated]

The article is ENTERTAINMENT, and should be viewed as such. The one thing that Star Trek did do was to gather lots of these ideas, put them into one place and bring them to the viewing masses. This in turn MAY have inspired people to work towards devices that we use today.
Live long and prosper!

[Jon]

John Frakes - when you saw the title of the piece, were you expecting Tolstoy? Could you describe how the topic could have been handled more to your tastes? I would love to see the erudite version.

[Graeme]

The 3.5" floppy disk was also inspired by TOS, they used similar sized plastic tiles on screen

[Adam]

Great list. Other than the fact that about half of the items haven't been invented yet. Lame!

[Curtis]

As far as the hypo-spray goes. Gene Roddenberry was called in to CIA offices to find out where he got that idea, since the US Military was already working on the idea at the time. The ideas were developed independently.

[Monson]

Well, when all of you WRIGHT a Star Trek adventure and make it something that people can get incentive from, to design new items etc., let me be the first to know - that way I can make some GOOD money !

[Rik]

C'mon guys...the article doesn't say Star Trek came up with all the ideas. It states that these things were inspired by Star Trek. Having these things shown on TV every week, being seen by future engineers is why certain things like the Motorola StarTac, the world's first flip phone, looks like a communicator, and the name even sounds like Star Trek.

[sam]

Don't forget the heart monitor. Beep, beep, beep...

[George]

You forgot an important one. Spock was in the library many years and he put a CD rom into a library CDrom reader and the images from the cdrom came on the video screen. This was long before CDroms

[VinceInTexas]

"I am actually very interested in the Enterprise Computer's voice based command system"
Have to chime in. A decade ago I was using a PC with voice commands activated. I used it for a day. All was well until I told someone to close the door. My spreadsheet shut down. I'd swear that computer was laughing at me

[Ty, Ipswich]

"Nigel Kendall is a retard.
Its not flat screen, its flat panel....there is a LARGE difference."

Oh dear someone missed the point of this article. Maybe there should be an age restriction for frequenters of this site?

[will morris]

It seems that all of the real geeks out there got quite anoyed by this reporters lack of knowledge.

it is a bit of a rubbish article though

[Julian]

sure it was a bit simplistic but they did miss 2 other obvious ones
1) MP3 and data storage of multimedia, might have been first shown in Next Generation where somebody would ask "computer : beethover moonlight sonata" and it was start playing from the computer's data storage.

2) bluetooth earpieces : Uhura's earthingie.

Star Trek might not have been responsable for them but it definitely brought the notions to a wider audience.

[Thomas Mulhern]

You guys need to lighten up, the title states clearly "Ten innovations inspired by Star Trek" it does not say that ST was the first to use them nor does he claim that they do.
It's common knowledge that ST inspired allot of people in the sciences, children became doctors, pilots & scientists because of that show. While the teleporter, hypospray & warp drive were not coined by ST it is still the show that INSPIRED people to pursue or in the case of hyposprays to make it better.

[daniel crook]

i would have a teleporter as you would not have to walk to school

[Mark Watson]

All done before in Dan Dare Pilot of the Future.

[Jeff Williams]

Articles like this may not be the end all for excellence in journalism. Still, the purpose is to provoke thought and reflection. One can pick on the flaws and still miss the points being made. Here is what Roddenberry was trying to achieve with the series: "Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before." Bringing together the innovations of the past and applying them to new situations and in new combinations offers us the opportunity to ask, is it really possible...? Truman said, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” Let's enjoy the creative thinking of Roddenberry and others and the vision of a future where the human race expands on the great experiment of living in peace while using technology to better life.

[andy dixon]

Very funny Scotty.Now beam up my clothes!!!

[edlphotographics]

What do you mean tricoders don't exist. Purdue built one in 2007. Although not yet as advanced as Star Trek's I bet it is only a matter of time.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/46719,us-boffins-show-off-reallife-tricorder.aspx

http://www.physorg.com/news91816015.html

[A precise (but not pedantic) engineer]

"Typical comments from a bunch of boring, humorless engineer types void of any creativity. I liked this article. Erika."

'Scuse me Erika but mobile phones, sliding door, LCD TV's, LASERs, space shuttles etc were CREATED by "engineer types". When was the last time you made something which changed the world ?

[Mike FW]

What about The Machine Stops by E M Foster written in 1909.

that has flat screen TV, Video link phones, computers, and loads of other stuff besides.

more than 50 years before star trek

ST is still awesome though.

when I got my first home computer with a colour screen at the age of 43 I could barely sleep the night before, it was something I had dreamed of since a child.

sad git aren't I - but at least I know it. :)

[Mike Elcome]

With regard to the talking computer I use an Apple and that can be used using spoken commands, and it will speak back, wow.
The PC that we all take for granted, the desk top PC,had its design from the original Star Trek. The touch screen phone was designed from an idea from Star Trek The list does go on if you do the reesearch in depth.
Yes I agree that there were a few films and programmes from many years prior to Star Trek that also featured these items, but it took Star Trek to bring them out into the "mainstream" and eventually get designed and produced.

[Lauren]

I have a similar article dealing with Star Trek's communications technologies becoming a reality. It is short and funny and I hope you enjoy:

http://beatthat.com/blog/star-trek-in-our-generation

[huxley]

"It's plagiarism Jim."

"Yes Bones but don't tell the Trekkies"

[pbrain]

Gene Roddenberry got a lot of cosmic insight from the Urantia Book

[pkay]

Yeah, I've been asking people for years where did we first SEE Flip Phones? Bender briefly touched on Computers; but another question I used ask folks: Where did we first see Diskettes (for the old A drives)? Why Mr. Spock always had a handful of Diskettes at his station on the Enterprise bridge (on the original series)!

[asdfas]

Cisco is innovating around an architectural approach we call “Unified Computing”. Unified Computing is the advancement toward the next generation data center that links all resources together in a common architecture to reduce the barrier to entry for data center virtualization. In other words, the compute and storage platform is architecturally “unified” with the network and the virtualization platform.