That 1963 Flip-Top Flip-Phone... FACT TREK

And I am offering a counterargument, which is how discussion is supposed to work. Why are you so defensive about it?

 

A bit late to this conversation, but I would just like to point out that the Century 21 Worlds Fair Exposition was held here in Seattle in 1962 and the flip phone and picture phone were part of the 'World of the 21st Century' exhibition. I've seen old news clippings and film online and at the museum at the Center House that show visitors looking at them.

 

Link please

 

We looked into that but so far nothing from that show we've found shows either the Picturephone or that flip-phone. In fact, the Picturephone Mod 1 premiered at the 1964 NY Fair, linked to devices set up at Disneyland.

Also, in our blog post we shared a film from the Bell Pavilion in Seattle, and the devices in question do not appear. We find it difficult to believe Bell Labs wouldn't have shown off at least a Picturephone of some sort if it were on display!

 

Thank you.

 

And the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" riffed version!

 

The blog makes a big omission when discussing Dick Tracey's wrist radio.

As I remember, the Dick Tracey comic strip replaced the 2-way wrist radios with 2-way wrist televisions sometime during the 1960s.

And here is a link to a site mentioning it:

https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/2-Way_Wrist_TV

And when I was a child I read a science fiction short story by Mark Twain (died 1910) in which a television was important to the plot. And if my memory serves me correctly it was a sort of television phone. As I remember, when I read it I was young enough to be confused about how much of it was real.

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/que...twain-science-fiction-story-with-a-television

 

The question was did the Star Trek communicator inspire the cell phone. Martin Cooper said "no" and mentioned the Dick Tracy 2-way wrist radio, hence the image for context. No one ever suggested the 2-way wrist TV inspired anything on Star Trek, ergo not germane.

 

Was the question was did Star Trek inspire "mobile phones" or flip-phones because the first mobile/cell phone I had was like a brick with an antenna nothing like a flip-phone?

Even if Star Trek, Get Smart, Dick Tracey, Mission Impossible didn't cause mobile phones to be invented maybe they encouraged Motorola etc just by being cool things on TV.

 

I don't think that's likely, given it's a logical development in communications tech that was already being looked into for decades before those shows. It feeds our egos to think something we love is so influential.

 

The question was did it inspire either, and it’s addressed in the blog post. No, the Trek communicator did not inspire the cell phone, but it’s possible—but there’s no evidence for—it inspired the flip phone. And if it did, and if it was itself inspired by that flip-top pocket phone concept, then that’s an amusing coming full circle.

 

That portable television looks exactly like a tricorder. Amazing work as usual.

 

My 12 year old self would have gone insane for that Philco Tricorder TV.

 

Funny how we have easy video calling now and -- in my family anyway -- we still mainly use just voice. Because it works just fine.

I think the number of people "muting" their cameras in zoom meetings ties in with this too.

OTOH, when a landing party is in communication with a ship, wouldn't they just wear a headcam or chestcam so the Captain can see, as well as get second-hand audio reports? Not gonna work well in budget-minded 60s or 80s TV, I know.

What an obstacle a show like Trek was up against, going after similar network money (ad dollars as other shows) but having such a big part of budget going for effects and new sets/planets, where other shows could use 20th c or Western costumes, set pieces, locations, etc. (Though not the TRW campus, ha ha.)

Really makes me appreciate what they got done. Props to Bob Justman et al.!

 

What I'm going to say isn't related to TOS in particular, but I still think it's relevant. What you describe was seen in the film "Aliens" In 1986. The entire squad all had head cams that gave the lieutenant a bird's-eye view of everything they saw.

I also laughed my ass off at the one TNG episode where they tried to use Geordie's VISOR as a camera of sorts; But honestly it looked like a scrambled TV signal at best; and after looking at it I was wondering how Geordie could even function or use the ship's control panels.

You'd think with the position of the TNG badge/communicators; with 24th century technology, they should have been able to add a camera lens with video recording ability to them, But no that seemed to be beyond the ability of the Federation.

 

Forbidden Planet had visual capability, too, but not continuously activated.

Complete with wolf-whistle.

 

A good in universe explanation is that simple audio keeps your head up and on task. Flash seizure inducing lights and no one viewing a screen is affected. Probes make more sense. There is a part of me that thinks anyone leaving a ship for a really hostile world…say the spawning ground of Carpenters THE THING…cannot be allowed back on.

 

In "A Wink of an Eye", " they had a recording of them on the planet. So I suppose the yeomen are taking recordings all the time on every mission and thats the first time they've mentioned it.
Maybe ship to planet isn't visual because if anyone wants to see anything on a planet they just beam down?

 

TNG did that once in "Identity Crisis," IIRC, so they could reconstruct the landing party's video on the holodeck. It's frustrating that they only did it the one time there was a plot reason for it.

Decades ago, when I was developing my own original SF universe, I was still copying Trek to a large extent, centering my ideas on starship exploration, but I tried to improve on the specifics. I had this whole system worked out where there was this big "Mission Ops" center behind the bridge, like the NASA or JPL Mission Control room, and a bunch of the ship's scientific specialists monitored everything the survey teams (landing parties/away teams) did with a continuous audio/video feed, providing expert advice and information when needed. It made more sense to me than the usual Trek approach where you've supposedly got hundreds of expert scientists on the ship but they apparently just sit around twiddling their thumbs while a bunch of bridge officers do all the actual exploring. You had a few adaptable generalists on the survey team and numerous specialists supporting them as needed, so you balanced the benefits of both. (Plus I always thought it would make a really cool set design.)

To be fair, we weren't seeing what Geordi actually saw, but a translation/simplification of it into the much narrower range of visible-light colors that natural human eyes could see. And Geordi had spent most of his life learning how to interpret that full-spectrum information, while we were seeing it for the first time. Think of it like reading a book in an unfamiliar language and writing system. It's meaningless squiggles to you, but a wealth of clear information to someone who knows how to read it.

That was always implicitly the idea. A yeoman is basically the captain's secretary, so the reason for having a yeoman on a landing party is to keep the mission log, including the captain's log. That's why yeomen carried tricorders with them. This was fairly common background business in the first season, but over time, as budgets were cut, they less frequently featured yeomen on landing parties.