TREK TECH / 40 years since the Enterprise's inception, some of its science fiction gadgets are part of everyday life

In the 23rd century universe of "Star Trek," people talked to each other using wireless personal communicators, had easy access to a vast database of information and spent hours gazing at a big wall-mounted video screen.

On 21st century Earth, that future is already here.

People talk to each other on wireless communicators called cell phones. They have instant access to infinite amounts of information on the Internet. And they can spend hours staring at a big wall-mounted plasma or liquid- crystal display TV watching reruns of "Star Trek." That is, if they can afford one.

Indeed, 40 years after "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry outlined his vision for the groundbreaking science-fiction TV series, some of the once- futuristic personal technology depicted in the voyages of the starship Enterprise have become a reality.

Moreover, "Star Trek" has influenced a generation of engineers and scientists, inspiring them to engage in the future they saw on TV and to "make it so."

"When I designed the UI (user interface) for the Palm OS back in '93, my first sketches were influenced by the UI of the Enterprise bridge panels," said Rob Haitani, product design architect for Palm-One Inc., the Milpitas firm that makes the popular handheld personal computers.

"Years later, when we designed the first Treo (a combo phone and wireless PDA), it had a form factor similar to the communicators in the original series. It had a speakerphone mode so you could stand there and talk into it like Capt. Kirk."

The show that made Capt. James T. Kirk, Lt. Cmdr. Spock and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy into pop-culture icons premiered on NBC on Sept. 8, 1966.

However, the genesis of the show dates to March 11, 1964, when Roddenberry wrote a 16-page draft pilot for a show he told network executives would be a "Wagon train to the stars," a nod to the many Westerns that populated TV schedules at the time. Later that year, shooting began on the first "Star Trek" pilot episode, "The Cage."

In interviews and memoirs written before he died in 1991, Roddenberry said NBC executives rejected the pilot as "too cerebral" but were impressed enough to green-light a second pilot.

Despite its intensely loyal following, "Star Trek" was canceled by NBC, and the last first-run episode aired in June 1969, a little more than a month before the Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon.

In syndication, "Star Trek" was propelled to a higher level of popularity, and even cult status. It became one of the most lucrative franchises in the annals of entertainment industry history, with an animated series, ten theatrical movies and four spin-off TV series -- including the present "Enterprise" on UPN.

Kirk to Enterprise

Whether it was because they were inspired by the show or because "Star Trek" writers often based science fiction on science fact, today's popular personal technology gadgets resemble or have similar functions to the show's nonworking props.

The prime example is the communicators, the portable palm-size transceivers with a flip-up cover-grid antenna that, according to "Star Trek" "technical" data, had been used "since at least the 2240s."

When they were on missions off the starship, seeking out new life and new civilizations, each crew member used the communicators to keep in voice contact with their shipmates.

The communicators also transmitted a special identification signal to allow the ship to gain a transporter lock on crew members, essential for beaming them back to the ship.

Similarly, today's cell phones -- many with the flip-up cover -- do more than just transmit voice signals. Newer models have global positioning system satellite technology to let emergency workers lock on to a caller's location. And some include GPS maps, helping owners to navigate unfamiliar streets.

Some cell phones also respond to simple voice commands, although it's still far from the level of sophistication depicted on the starship.

One other similarity: As with cell phones, Star Fleet communicators didn't always work. Thanks to "ion storms" or other "subspace" interference, "Star Trek" crew members had their own "dead zones" to deal with.

Also, new hands-free devices worn on the ear to connect wirelessly with cell phones loosely resemble the "ear receiver" used by the Enterprise's communications officer, Lt. Uhura.

Time warp

To appreciate how far ahead of its time "Star Trek" was, consider that in 1964:

-- The main consumer communications device was a telephone tethered to the wall by a cord that could not be unplugged except by a trained technician from Ma Bell. Modular jacks and cordless phones were years from being average household items, so the idea of a personal wireless communications device was as alien as a Keeper on Talos IV.

-- Computers were large contraptions used by big corporations or the government, not in the home.

-- Television broadcasters and makers of TVs were still in the early stages of the transition from black-and-white to color, and many households had only one TV. A typical "big screen" TV of that era measured 23 inches diagonally and was housed in a wooden box.

-- Audio entertainment was stored on vinyl records or spools of magnetic reel-to-reel tape.

-- Although a Sony engineer proposed the idea of a videocassette recorder that year, it would be a dozen years before the company introduced the first Betamax home video recorder in the United States.

On "Star Trek," however, computers were ubiquitous, running everything from life-support systems to long-range sensors. The voice-activated computer gave any crew member instant access to a database containing the recorded histories of Earthlings, Vulcans, Romulans and other known life forms.

"The flashing lights and teletype sounds when they were computing were silly, but the concept that computers would be ubiquitous in life as tools seemed inevitable to me, but was not a widely held belief in the 1970s," said "Star Trek" fan Steve Perlman, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and founder of WebTV.

Today, the Internet links personal computers in homes, schools and businesses. And computer technology is incorporated into every modern convenience, from automobiles to watches.

"Star Trek" writers "didn't succeed in predicting the Web, and they didn't predict the networking of computers," said David Allen Batchelor, an astrophysicist in the Science Communications Technology Branch at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

But "Star Trek" "had a huge multimedia library, accessible like the Web is now," Batchelor said. A lifelong "Star Trek" fan, Batchelor wrote a paper called "The Science of Star Trek," posted on the NASA Goddard site, that examines "Star Trek" technology that is already available, possible, unlikely or impossible.

There are no smart androids, such as "Norman" in the episode "I, Mudd." But Batchelor noted there is a form of artificial intelligence not seen when that episode aired in 1967 that is taken for granted today -- phone answering systems.

"This is rather primitive usually, but there are some good systems, like the one that I use to call the Washington Post and suspend delivery at my home while I'm away," Batchelor said. "It's pleasant to use and performs its task automatically."

Onscreen

"Star Trek" crews never wasted their star dates watching TV, but they were surrounded by electronic video screens called viewers, either on tabletops or affixed to workstations. The main viewer on the bridge was a wall- size screen.

In the first pilot, Mr. Spock used a viewer in a meeting room to display what resembled a primitive PowerPoint presentation to the ship's executive officers.

In the past two years, makers of consumer electronics and computers have been pushing similar-looking devices: large-screen flat-panel plasma and LCD TV monitors that can be hung on a wall.

Warp factor MP3

On "Star Trek," the crew recorded audio and video messages on square, palm-size cartridges that were played back with a computer. Today, small, square flash-memory cards are used to store digital photos, MP3s and short videos. Disk drives, CDs and DVDs also store multimedia files.

"In the '60s, it was inconceivable that you would have a miniature disk drive, let alone nonviolable semiconductor memory in a plastic square," said Perlman in an e-mail.

In a 2002 book, "Star Trek: I'm Working on That," actor William Shatner, who played Capt. Kirk, examined technologies and inventors inspired by the show. He also commented on the stunning pace of technological advancement during the "Star Trek" era.

"We're like the driver behind the wheel of a car that's suddenly accelerated from zero to 150 miles an hour in the space of a few seconds. Not only that, but we're not sure how to operate the damn thing," Shatner wrote.

"I suspect that one of the purposes of science fiction is to let us play out our nightmares and our dreams in the theater of the future before we turn them into reality."

Techies who are Trekkies

Steve Perlman, WebTV founder

Episodes like “The Menagerie” contemplated technology that could create an artificial reality. This was hugely inpiring to me, and it’s one of the things that drove me into exploring computer graphics, motion capture, audio perception. And a lot of this work made its way into the color Mac. I was a big fan. .

Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder

I went to Star Trek conventions. During my Apple design days I’d come home to my apartment, from work at nearby HP, to watch Star Trek (reruns) and then head back to HP to work late ….

Rob Haitani, PalmOne designer

I have to say I was most inspired by the vision of racial equality. Remember in those days, Japanese people were portrayed on TV as buck-toothed clowns with thick glasses. But on Star Trek, there were Asian and African American bridge officers, and starships with Japanese names.