Travel in Terror

[EddMarkStarr]

When the original Star Trek aired in 1966 my grandma was so terrified by the thought of a "Transporter" that she refused to watch further episodes. My childhood friends thought that Transporters, or Teleportation, was cool and helped Star Trek standout from all the other sci-fi shows on television. But there was lively debate among friends, classmates and teachers about the development of teleportation. Converting mass into energy, sending the energy to a destination where it will be converted back into mass - sounded a lot like how television works sending images and sound across distances.

My idea was that teleportation development would happen in baby steps, maybe starting with an intense energy field modulated by magnetic polarity.

The best example of the groundwork for teleportation I ever saw was the 1963 broadcast, "Borderland", a modulated energy field opens a doorway to a "mirror-verse".

 

[cityboy-stl]

They've done it at the quantum level already. But teleporting an actual object is a different matter. The amount of data alone needed to correctly reconstruct the original object from an energy stream (or matter stream as ST calls it) has to be enormous.

I am still not real comfortable with airplanes.

 

[EddMarkStarr]

They've done it at the quantum level already. But teleporting an actual object is a different matter. The amount of data alone needed to correctly reconstruct the original object from an energy stream (or matter stream as ST calls it) has to be enormous.

I am still not real comfortable with airplanes.

Here's the down side of being a little kid, around 1961 I barely remember seeing a movie where a research team was experimenting with 3-dimensional television, but the imaging array could not get a "lock" on live subjects because they couldn't hold perfectly still for long enough. I was so young and this was so long ago, it feels more like a dream instead of a memory.

 

[Peloso]

When the original Star Trek aired in 1966 my grandma was so terrified by the thought of a "Transporter" that she refused to watch further episodes.

I hope she never watched "The Fly".

 

[pigface]

Arthur C. Clarke wrote "Travel by wire" in 1937, so getting the concept in the public imagination quite a while before star trek.

 

[EddMarkStarr]

Arthur C. Clarke wrote "Travel by wire" in 1937, so getting the concept in the public imagination quite a while before star trek.

Yes indeed, and I recall Arthur C. Clarke discussing the idea of teleportation originating from the 19th century.

There is a book in the Seattle Library, "The Complete History of the Automobile", that begins with the Roman Empire.
My dad used to get angry at the television and say, "nothing is original, everything on TV is something someone else already did", this was back in the 1960's.

 

[eddielee]

In order to transport a person, you have to deconstruct them, which means they are dead. Teleportation through wormholes might be safer, but no less farfetched.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I like the ole transporter beam. It's pure fiction, based loosely on science, but it helps propel the story line far into the future and make the adventure more fantastic. SOOOO many TV shows in the sci-fi genre fall flat as stale and boring because they don't adequately have the reach exceed man's grasp.

It won't matter what I opine, but my guess is that humans will never teleport, and that no living creature as we know it, can.

Teleportation is in the same realm as intergalactic travel and exploration, or wormholes. It is good for mankind to imagine, to reach, so using the stars as that motivatiton is ideal, literally. Wormholes are a fictional convenience, both for science and mythology, to make the impossible possible, a type of placeholder until we can dream of other things, like living in the oceans. They only exist theorettically, like altruisttic politicians, or unconditional love.

Just imagine how much longer our species might endure if we do, without the need to occupy only the land masses. So much real estate exists in the continenttal shelves, and near the majority of the flora and fauna of the seas. I wish that dream could come to fruition in at least the 22nd century.

We greatly need to redirect the resources we're pouring into space right now with figuring out how to exploit the seas without ruining them further.

 

[EddMarkStarr]

I wish I had the ability to recount all the radio and TV shows, all the magazines, all the conversations involving teleportation in my early childhood.

When I was too young, to fully understand, the early 1960's was in a Teleportation mini-craze. It was an idea that seemed to be everywhere but was starting to fade away by 1964.

 

[pigface]

Who'd have believed you, in 1700, if you'd told them within 300 years you'd be able to talk to anyone on earth immediately, with a little box carried in your pocket?

 

[pigface]

John Harrison dedicated his entire life and thousands of pounds to building an accurate portable clock so that sailors would not get lost at sea. Now that same box mentioned above can locate you anywhere on Earth within 1 ft.

Interestingly, at that time it was a crime punishable by death, to keep a record of or chart a ships course in any way that contradicted the records of the ship's appointed navigator.

 

[EddMarkStarr]

Who'd have believed you, in 1700, if you'd told them within 300 years you'd be able to talk to anyone on earth immediately, with a little box carried in your pocket?

You Nailed It!

Our Online World of Communication makes teleportation seem like a waste of time and energy. Right now I could visit the Eiffel Tower, even ride to the top, online. A robot sub with a high-resolution camera can take me to the wreck of the Titanic, from the comfort of my computer room. A few months ago I was working a full-time office job from home.

There's something about physically locating oneself, place to place, that seems as outdated as a horse and carriage.