The first time a tricorder is ever seeen...

...is a little anticlamctic for such a now-ubiquitous piece of Star Trek tech:

http://wrathofdhanprops.blogspot.com/2014/06/retro-first-look-tricorders-first.html

 

My second favorite tricorder scene, from Arena:

SPOCK: They've locked onto my tricorder!
(throws tricorder)
BLAM!!

There was the medical version which worked with McCoy's handheld scanner gizmos, the "science" version, and the general-purpose version that a yeoman would use to record landing party actions and log entries. Oh, and also a version that could be used as a lie detector, as seen in Wolf in the Fold.

 

Well, that makes sense for how Star Trek wanted to show its version of the future. They didn't spend every scene sitting around going, "Now I will contact the control center on my videophone" while looking at the camera with a shit-eating grin; they would just press a button on the control panel and the bridge would appear on the little screen. Star Trek wanted to be different by showing you this is their job, this is their normal everyday. To us the tricorder is an amazing piece of futuretech, but to them it's a portable scanner/computer that has been in use for a hundred years.

 

What's your favorite?

 

I love how Pissed Spock sounds when he says it, too! That's really one of my favorite episodes, plot holes/illogic be damned.

I'm guessing the rock throwing contest is the number 1, Kirk struggles to throw that sizable stone down onto the Gorn and he basically says "ouch" and tosses up a boulder. The look on Kirk's face is wonderful. Shatner was great, he really sold a lot in this one.

Edit: Oops, I thought you meant second favorite Arena scene, not tricorder scene, sorry there.

 

Spock's tricorder really is one of the central elements in The City on The Edge of Forever, and I absolutely love the "nickel plated, vacuum tube" frame grabber/buffer that he builds out of radio parts and other junk, it always reminds me of the ham radio projects my father and I used to build back when I was a kid.

 

The Tricorder is one of my favorite props from Trek- I never could however figure out how all those elaborate functions could be controlled by three push buttons...

 

I've never read Spock's reaction as anger, though maybe it's because I'm reduced to tinny sounding tv speakers instead of a good sound system.

I always thought he was reacting with surprise, with a touch of dismay, to the degree that he couldn't even manage to say "fascinating", which he reserves for the unexpected.

 

It's funny how Roddenberry said he wanted their equipment to be used like anything the average cop or doctor might carry, as far as recognition and lack of explanation, but the first time we see a communicator in The Cage, Robert Butler holds on the image and slowly zooms in for a few seconds after Pike is done speaking with Boyce (who sounds 20 years younger on the comm than the actor did otherwise). It was like "look at this COOL TECH!" But it's the only thing he did that with.

 

I've always thought that was odd. That shot of the communicator is showcased so much, it practically deserves its own music cue.

 

Well, if it helps, I think they're actually rotary knobs.

 

I love Star Trek, so I have to love the tricorder,

but I never understood the name. It always hits me as "tri" = three and "corder"= a word sounds too much like "cordis" the Latin word for "heart", so there must be 3 little hearts inside that box, right?

Much much later I read the "corder" part is short for "recorder", which IMHO is odd

Well Roddenberry liked to slap numeric prefixes in words like "quadrotriticale" and "dilithium", maybe

just very recently I leard triticale is a real thing

 

At the time, portable cassette tape recorders were a new audio technology that seemed very cutting-edge and futuristic. I mean, wow, it's like a reel-to-reel tape deck, but the reels are tiny and in this little case you can carry in your pocket, and you don't have to thread the tape manually because it threads itself, and you can carry the whole machine around with you on a shoulder strap! Amazing!

So the idea was to create a prop that was inspired by portable cassette recorders, but that combined the audio (and video) recording function with a portable computer and a sensor device. So it was a sensor/computer/recorder -- a trifunction recorder. Tricorder for short.

It is a little harder to understand that in an age where we all carry "phones" that are also internet browsers, video and still cameras, audio recorders, music and video players, GPS navigators, memo pads, calendars, flashlights, magnifying glasses, game devices, e-book readers, electronic credit cards and airline tickets, etc. etc. The idea of something that does three whole things being futuristic doesn't really register with us.

 

The classic communicator especially suffers in this respect. But its gold and black styling is still gorgeous and it makes cool sounds. I even like the hollow "klup!" sound it makes when Kirk flips it shut.

 

The tricorder was the 60s equivalent of a smart phone, without the "phone" part. For its time, it was bleeding edge imaginary technology.

 

I like that closing sound, too!

I see all of what is said here, and superficially how today's gadgets seem to out-do the futuristic tricorder. But do they?

Can we use a smart phone to analyze the constituents of a plant, or identify a mineral? Perform on-the-spot autopsies and diagnoses? Break down the contents of the atmosphere around us? Record an ultra-fast replay of human history and slow the images down to a stop? Though admittedly, that was achieved with Spock's technical assistance (I always did wonder exactly what his primitive memory circuit did.)

True, our modern phones can be used as position locaters...but can they be set to send distress beacons? Detectable in deep space, no less? Can the age of unknown objects be determined with a phone?

All of this, and much more I can't even remember offhand, at the touch of three butting (or dials)? With no internet to connect to, make all of this possible? And when was the last time you saw a tricorder run out of power?

I'd say the tricorder holds up to scrutiny just fine.

 

Amazing they didn't invent the 4-corder (or tetracorder, or quadricorder) for TNG

 

It is important to remember that today's smartphones, phablets, and other portable gadgets, despite a burgeoning app market, are frequently limited in their abilities because they depend on some outside infrastructure to download an app or to download up-to-date information. (Usually requiring wifi or cellular connections)

STAR TREK's communicators and tricorders are presented as field equipment items to be used on far-away alien worlds or in deep space; isolated places where there is generally little or no infrastructure. So for deep space explorers, there are no cell towers or hot spots to interact with.

Communicators are repeatedly shown having surface-to-orbit capability, but also deep-space-to-planet ability as well. ("Mudd's Women", "Metamorphosis", TNG's "Silicon Avatar"). It seems unlikely that any cellphone, smart or otherwise, will facilitate off-world party-to-party communications in our lifetimes.

While the tricorder may look and sound more awkward today, it's a safe bet that no mobile gadget (or any descendent of them, for many years to come) can independently scan space from the surface of a planetary body to detect an orbiting space vessel (or lack thereof). ("That Which Survives", STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT)

 

Thoughtful posts, guys; they should be a Sticky for anyone who posts or refers to any news media piece where the TOS tech is said to be "surpassed" by smartphones, etc. The details of TOS field equipment is nowhere to be found in today's gadgets--particularly in weaponry. I pay attention to much of the military weaponry in development (rather, what is cleared to be revealed to the media), and nothing is in the same conversation with TOS Phasers (1,2 or rifle), much like the specifics of your posts.

However, it always draws a chuckle when someone tries to mirror tazers/wands/stunguns or lasers to the Phaser. That's about as accurate a comparison as a Hot Wheel to a real automobile.

 

They might be both twist and push- IIRC in 'City of the Edge of Forever' you see Spock tapping them to control the replay