Do you remember watching Star Trek for the first time in 1966 and thinking, “That will never happen in my lifetime”?
Well. About that.
Gene Roddenberry, the American writer and producer who created the show, launched it on U.S. television screens in 1966. It went on to become a global phenomenon. And a lot of what the crew of the USS Enterprise carried around back then? We pull it out of our pockets every single day now.
Here is a look at six pieces of Star Trek technology that turned out to be anything but science fiction.
The Communicator, a.k.a. Your Cell Phone
In 1966, if you wanted to make a phone call, you walked to the nearest landline. Handheld wireless devices existed, but they worked over short distances and were nothing close to personal. The communicators the Enterprise crew used (no wires, no cords, call anyone anywhere) would have seemed completely impossible.
Today, mobile coverage reaches almost the entire world’s population. You carry a wireless communicator in your pocket. Roddenberry just got there first.
Touchscreens, Smooth Glass Instead of Buttons
While other science fiction shows of the era stuck with banks of buttons, switches, and levers, Star Trek went sleek. The crew controlled their equipment on smooth glass panels with a touch.
Sound familiar? That is exactly what your smartphone, tablet, and ATM screen look like today.
The PADD: Hello, iPad
Star Trek called it the PADD, short for personal access display device. It was a handheld control device the crew used to pull up information and manage systems on the go.
Apple introduced the iPad in 2010. The resemblance was hard to miss.
The Universal Translator, Now a Standard App
Moving between alien worlds and species, the Enterprise crew relied on a “universal translator” to understand any language they encountered. In 1966, that idea must have seemed wonderfully far-fetched.
Now it is a feature built right into your search engine, your phone, and any number of tablet apps. You can listen to a foreign language, and your device will translate and speak it back to you in dozens of languages from around the world.
The Computer: From a Room-Sized Machine to Your Fingertips
When Star Trek first aired in the late 1960s, real computers were enormous machines that filled entire rooms. They ran on punch cards. Only a small number of specialists could make sense of their readouts.
Every version of Star Trek imagined something completely different: a computer holding a vast, searchable library of information, accessible to anyone with the press of a few buttons. That is exactly what you are using right now.
The Tricorder: Closer Than You Think
The tricorder was the Swiss Army knife of the Star Trek universe, a handheld scanner that could analyze environments, record data, and assess health. Dr. McCoy barely set it down.
We are not quite there yet, but we are closer than you might expect. Handheld devices today can do everything from measuring light levels to detecting background radiation. And in a recent Instagram post celebrating real-life Star Trek technology in space, the European Space Agency compared Dr. McCoy’s tricorder to a device called the MyotonPRO. With a simple scan of an astronaut’s skin, it can assess how their muscles are holding up in a zero-gravity environment.
Not bad for a TV show that debuted the same year as the Beatles’ Revolver. Roddenberry looked at the future and described it pretty well. We just had to catch up.
