Topic: SciFi origins of Star Trek technologies

[Nemesis]

I've been wondering about the origin of various Star Trek technologies in SciFi, how many are original to Trek and how many were merely popularized by it.  The origins of each item can be subdivided into two parts.  Part 1 the tech and Part 2 the name.  Below I list the techs and the earliest occurance I know of outside Trek.

(Space) Warp Drive: The Islands of Space (John W. Campbell Jr 1930), as a "space strain drive"

Matter/Anti-Matter Power: The Islands of Space (John W. Campbell Jr 1930), using lead/anti-lead.

(Deflector) Shields: Very brief mention of using an "attractor" (aka Tractor beam) to screen the characters In Skylark of Space (E.E. "Doc" Smith 1928).  In Skylark Three (1930) a "Zone of Force" also gets referred to as an impenetrable shield.  Skylark Three has numerous mentions of and uses of screens and to a lesser degree the Zone of Force. Triplanetary (E.E. "Doc" Smith 1934) makes extensive use of the word shield in the same sense as Trek.  See note below under Tractor/Pressor beams for Repellors in Skylark of Space. 

Phasors:?

Disruptors:?

Photon Torpedoes:?

Transporters: Skylark DuQuesne (1965) as 4th dimensional translation.  An episode of The Adventures of Superman (1957) had matter transmission by wire not through open space.

Tractor/Pressor Beams: As attractors in Skylark of Space (E.E. "Doc" Smith 1928), repellors being not being beams but a surrounding energy zone (Star Trek navigational deflector equivalent perhaps?) By name and function Triplanetary (E.E. "Doc" Smith 1934)

Anti-Gravity: ?

Plasma Torpedoes: ?

Cloaking Device: Invisibility device (not called a cloak) in The Black Star Passes (John W. Campbell Jr 1930)

Stasis (of Time) or Stasis Device: Skylark of Valeron (E.E. "Doc" Smith 1934) as a "Stasis of Time.

Shuttlecraft: Not by name but in Skylark Three (E.E. "Doc" Smith 1930) the 3rd Skylark used the 2nd as a ships boat, same function as Skylark 3 was large enough that landing would be a problem.

Sensors / Scanners:

[Brush Wolf]

Phasors:? Disruptors:? - Death rays and ray guns were a staple of early science fiction.

[Sirgod]

I believe the short Story "The Fly" was written the same year as those Superman episodes. So it may come down to the month, on which was first for teleportation.

George Langelaan (1908–1969) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0486228/

Would have to dig further though to find which was actually first.

Stephen

[Lieutenant_Q]

Disrupters are actually based on an experimental German technology.  The Nazis dabbled briefly with sonic disrupters.  The technology had a couple of problems.  First it wasn't mobile, they wasn't a battery powerful enough (at the time) for even one shot, let alone multiple shots.  Second, they couldn't figure out how to direct the effect.  It may have had some use as an omni directional mine, but even that was suspect, as power costs were enormous.  It never really reached the prototype phase.  If an effective carrier wave could be developed, the invention of the Music Amplifier could actually make the technology viable.

Warp Drive is pretty much the Alcubere (I'm misspelling this I know) warp drive, that was first theorized in the 40s or 50s.

[Panzergranate]

The Cubans complained the the United Nations that the US Forces used experimental sonic disrupters in an ambush on a Cuban truck unit during the Grenada invasion / liberation in 1985.

Witnesses claimed that they saw men collapse into blobs of flesh as their bones turned to power and that trucks simply started to fall apart.

The UN actually investigated this claim but their findings remain secret.

The UN added Sonic Disrupters to the banned weapons list in 1998.

A passive form of the Sonic Disrupter is the Brown Noise Emitter.

If humans (and otgher mamals) are exposed to a loud sub-sonic 22 Hertz tone they will become both incontinent and evacuate their bowls (providing that the bomb bay is loaded). Several nations have experimented with this during the 1960's for crowd control.

Best remembered for killing Kenny (yet again) in South Park when he crapped himself to death after being exposed to a Brown Noise Emitter.

The Phaser, as decribed in a 1960's book on lasers I've read, is a laser beam passed through a polarising filter so as to focus the beam's band width (and power) into a very tight spectrum. It stood for Polarised Laser originally.

This was also the original Star Trek definition for a Phaser in the original series but writers found real physics to limiting and by the next generation Phasers were polarised focused energy beams.

Interestingly enough, unlike a conventional laser, a polarised laser can be modulated and manipulated in the same way as many TNG plots tinkerb with Phasers, depending on the plot.

System wise, all series of Star Trek have Phasers retaining exactly the same physical system blocks as a Laser.

A laser has a capacitor bank which is charged up (or refreshed) and discharged into the laser firing chamber which is then discharged. If the chamber is not discharged it will suffer a forced chamber breech which is not as dramatic as in a Star Trek plot.

I have a ex-millitary laser up in the attic and it needs new capacitors fitted to the charge bank.

The stun function was added in Star Trek after real life experiments, during the 1960's found that humans exposed to a burst of high powered laser light at certain frequencies suffered massive self induced shock to the nervous system that caused temporary paralisys and loss of conciousness similar to receiving and electric shock. This was reported in many scientific journals at the time.