Star Trek Tech: Tricorders Move Ever Closer To Reality
Gene Roddenberry's Sci-Fi Invention May Soon Become Real
Scanning… I am picking up no signs of intelligent life. - Spock
Spock, perhaps you need to recalibrate your tricorder. For the rest of us getting by without Starfleet tech down here on Earth, the real tricorders are coming soon and they’re destined to drastically change our lives.
Wait a minute, a tricorder? That totally cool but completely fictional device on that similarly fictional TV show called Star Trek will one day become reality?
WTF?! WHAT THE FEDERATION?!
Yup, it’s happening. All you tech junkies out there needing a sci-fi working prop fix will not only be able to purchase a real functioning tricorder, but just think of how much less you’ll use your iPhone or Android when that special day finally arrives.
Gene Roddenberry’s Technological Legacy
We all know how the original Starfleet communicator became a kind of sci-fi model for the creators of the clamshell style mobile phones. That’s certainly understandable and impressive, as Star Trek always lays claim as a real life science muse by dramatic depiction in its landmark science fiction. Another high tech toy, the phaser, is also something highly prized by fans on the list of fiction becoming fact. Of course as handy as a phaser may be, you’re not going to be using it daily - at least those of us not engaging in extreme alien gun battles regularly.
The Tricorder - if fully realized as a workable device - is an instrument many would use regularly. Measuring atmosphere stability, weather, detecting lifeforms, sensing geological instability patterns - places with fault lines such as CA would love better early earthquake warning - and so on.
An original Tricorder can even process and read data discs, which enabled it to display videos, or in Spock’s case, record rapid time eddies to enable he and Captain Kirk to chase after a chemically deranged Dr. McCoy who’d travelled into Earth’s past during the episode, City On The Edge of Forever.
Artist Wah Ming Chang designed the original tricorder prop. The talented visionary could probably never have imagined how beloved his props would become, let alone how often they’d be copied to make toys and high priced replicas. His communicator, phaser and tricorder form the cornerstone of a well equipped Starfleet officer on an away mission.
Gene Roddenberry is credited with not only creating Trek, but encouraging real life scientific exploration in how he handled his TV show. He did something which not only promoted a serious attempt at making a real, functional tricorder, but his decision allowed any company to call their device a tricorder.
In 1996, the Vital Technologies Corporation brought out a device they called The Official Star Trek Tricorder Mark 1. The unit had an EMF (Electromagnetic Field Meter) a Two-Mode Weather Station comprised of a thermometer and barometer, a Colorimeter, Light Meter and Stardate Clock and Timer.
So, how did Roddenberry get around any legal wrangling which may have prevented a company from marketing their own tricorder with enduring an avalanche of lawsuits? He had a clause put in his own contract to let a company market devices called tricorders, so long as they legitimately functioned in some practical way.
Functionally Real and Near Real
In 2011, the X Prize Foundation joined forces with Qualcomm Inc to sponsor a competition to create a mobile tricorder like device. The top prize was $10 million and in 2012, the winning team was Final Frontier Medical Devices which later became Basil Leaf Technologies.
Toy makers have always pushed the tech envelope to produce toys kids must play with and collect. Adult toy and model collectors are even more demanding consumers. They pay good money to purchase items which help them revisit the magic of the TV shows and movies they adore. Large communities of prop collectors scour Ebay and other auction sites to find just the right way to dispose of more of their income.
And the bottom dollar? Are they worth the often expensive investment? Most collectors sure are convinced. The near functionality or near real feel of these toys and prop replicas synthesize the same lights, sounds and even complex movements of many Trek props. Beam me up, Scotty can be accomplished, after a fashion, by using an exact replica or convincing toy communicator. Cosplayers at sci-fi conventions comprise a large segment of the customer base buying this stuff.
The popular toy maker, Playmates, released a great tricorder toy in the 1990’s and it was a big hit with kids and collectors alike.
On the high end of the collecting spectrum, fans with gold pressed latinum to spare will fork over hundreds of even thousands of dollars to support their obsession. In 2005, the Master Replicas company crafted a pricey tricorder version, which like the toys, has a near real functionality, capable of the same sounds, movements and lights as depicted on classic Star Trek episodes.
The Wand Company Magic
Wizards casting spells in Starfleet? They just might qualify to join up to enlarge the exploratory ranks, since Harry Potter’s magic wand has been instrumental in bringing highly detailed and functional Star Trek props into creation.
The Wand Company first dove into the prop replica pool with the release of their Harry Potter Kymera Remote Control Wand. Potter fans were overjoyed by the style and cool functionality of the wand. Since then, they’ve lovingly crafted the classic Trek communicator and phaser. Now, they’re hard at work producing a tricorder which promises to be the most exciting prop replica ever offered to Trekkers.
Below, check out the trailer for their forthcoming tricorder replica.
Star Trek’s versatile tricorder encapsulates Gene Roddenberry’s galactic spanning vision by being multi-functional, while also urging real life scientists to produce a practical, working version. Our own cell phones boast a kind of quasi tricorder function today, as they can do many things at once and are indispensable. One day, doctors, engineers and everyday people may bring along their tricorder everywhere as well.