How the Props of Star Trek Influence our World - A Discovery Channel Documentary

October 25, 2005
By PropMaster - staff writer

A new documentary on Star Trek and the development of technology, How William Shatner Changed the World, premieres next month. Hosted and narrated by William Shatner, the documentary will show how the props and science of "Star Trek" inspired the brightest minds of Silicon Valley to create the gadgets that have changed the world.
Channel Canada reports, "As a young boy in 1960 suburbia, Mark Rayman was less interested in how far he could hit a baseball than how far it was to the Final Frontier. Captivated by television coverage of the early Mercury flights – and the Star Trek expeditions a channel or two over – Rayman is now Chief Engineer in charge of the Robotic Deep Space Probe project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And the longstanding affection between NASA and Trekkies is mutual – NASA’s very first Space Shuttle was named Enterprise, and, according to Shatner, this was no coincidence.

And while some young Trekkies dreamed of space, others were more interested in the gadgets o­nboard in the year 2300 and would make it their life’s work to bring these toys off the screen and o­nto the streets. According to Shatner, booking a date for Friday night and fielding inquiries from casting agents got a lot easier thanks to an industrious Trekkie named Marty Cooper. Cooper, a chief engineer at Motorola, understood that people were inherently mobile and would never want to be chained to their desks, tethered to conventional telephones. Captain Kirk and his USS Enterprise colleagues were o­n to something with their cordless “communicator” with voice recognition technology. Inspired by the brick-like device, Cooper and the Motorola team invented the first mobile cellular phone, giving birth to the start of a communications revolution.

And for some young minds captivated by the fictional world of Star Trek, the possibility of communicating with Talarians, Klingons and Gorns would lead to the most basic question: Is something “out there” beyond our own solar system, and if so, how do we find them? Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer with the SETI Institute (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) which works alongside NASA, credits Star Trek with synthesizing the physics and astronomy of the search for extra-terrestrial life with the emotional and intellectual drive to know and understand the rest of our universe.

The evolution of the computer, the microchip and software programs is peppered with Star Trek influences, from the primitive Altair 8800 (named after a Star Trek solar system) and its evolution into the first Apple computer to the rise of Bill Gates and Microsoft. And as a result of Star Trek, human operating systems also began to reflect this futuristic vision. The USS Enterprise sickbay, under the medical supervision of Doctor McCoy, specialized in quick diagnosis and scalpel-free – and painless – surgery. For Stanford University Hospital brain surgeon Doctor John Adler, this protocol was the o­nly way forward. Today, non-invasive diagnostics, CAT scans and MRIs are a matter of course and, inspired by Star Trek technologies, Adler has invented the Cyberknife – a computer-controlled robotic device that employs a laser beam to remove cancers without even the smallest cut."

So, prop geeks lift your chins a little higher everytime someone "flips" open their cell phone. I'll bet Wah Chang did.

You can see the documentary in Canada on the Discovery Channel on November 13, 2005 at 8:00pm eastern time. You can read the entire article at this URL- http://www.channelcanada.com/Article1089.html