Those Mysterious Transporter Controls

[Spock's Barber]

From Operation : Annihilate....Eddie Paskey pushes the three sliding controls up to send Kirk and friends down to Deneva.

From Omega Glory.,.Frank Vinci pulls the sliders down to send Kirk and buddies over to the Exeter. (Actually Frank pulls the middle one down as Kirk enters the Transporter Room. Then he pulls the 2 outside sliders down to activate the Transporter beams)

I’m sure someone on TrekBBS can explain this mystery. I always thought you pushed up to beam down and pulled down to beam down.

 

[Mytran]

It seems in Omega Glory he was using the middle switch to "lock on" to the Exeter. This extra step may be a safety feature, necessary due to the risk involved in beaming aboard a tight environment like the interior of a starship.

 

[Spock's Barber]

It seems in Omega Glory he was using the middle switch to "lock on" to the Exeter. This extra step may be a safety feature, necessary due to the risk involved in beaming aboard a tight environment like the interior of a starship.

That makes sense. I’m sure Kirk must have used that procedure for intraship beaming in Day of the Dove.

 

[Phaser Two]

Heavens, that console is impossibly cool. Just gorgeous.

 

[Henoch]

I’m sure someone on TrekBBS can explain this mystery. I always thought you pushed up to beam down and pulled down to beam down.

Your transporter seems to beam only one way: down. I think you meant to say "...and pulled down to beam up." or vice versa.

A better description is beam out and beam in. Up and down is only relative with a planet below.

Or you lock on to your target designation to beam out or target to beam in, and then the final beaming operation is the same, pull the levels down.

 

[johnnybear]

It's a bit like how in Doctor Who William Hartnell was the only Doctor to have a method of using certain switches and buttons to dematerialise and rematerialise while the rest of the Doctors used whatever buttons suited them at the time all the way up to the eighties where a procedure had to be followed to avoid viewers noticing the haphazardness!
JB

 

[Forbin]

I once had a stereo component cassette deck that had an angled top surface with two sliding volume controls to mix the channels. My wife accused me of buying it just because it looked like the transporter.
She wasn't wrong.

 

[Timo]

...I'm sure every console recognizes the user and applies his or her preferred configuration to the controls. And of course some can't fathom why others would wish for the power ramp-UP to be done by sliding DOWN, others can't figure out why beaming DOWN ought to involve a slide UP.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[uniderth]

...I'm sure every console recognizes the user and applies his or her preferred configuration to the controls. And of course some can't fathom why others would wish for the power ramp-UP to be done by sliding DOWN, others can't figure out why beaming DOWN ought to involve a slide UP.

Timo Saloniemi

Yes. I think the console can detect what the user wants to have happen and does that regardless of which buttons are pressed. So really the buttons are there just to "look cool" and so the people can "feel cool" when they use the controls.

 

[johnnybear]

I once had a stereo component cassette deck that had an angled top surface with two sliding volume controls to mix the channels. My wife accused me of buying it just because it looked like the transporter.
She wasn't wrong.

I had something like that too, Forbs! It was what I used to record Trek on back in 1978/79! Thing was the left hand one had to be at ten and the right at four, five or six to get a good recording! But occasionally I was known to make a pring sound and move those rascals up and down! But not while I was taping anything of course...
JB

 

[Henoch]

Your transporter seems to beam only one way: down. I think you meant to say "...and pulled down to beam up." or vice versa.

A better description is beam out and beam in. Up and down is only relative with a planet below.

Or you lock on to your target designation to beam out or target to beam in, and then the final beaming operation is the same, pull the levels down.

Crap. Just saw Kirk beamed down to a planet in The Alternative Factor and transporter tech pushed the control sliders up.

 

[Mytran]

Plus in other episodes (where the transporters have trouble and the crewman has to give it several attempts) the sliders are used to energise the system in both directions

 

[uniderth]

Maybe the sliders have to be moved based on the cumulative total of everyone beaming down's personality type. This would make it more art than science.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

The sliders seem to be part of a manual mechanism by which an experienced transporter operator monitors audio-visual feedback during a transport cycle and makes split-second adjustments that cannot in emergencies be left to the ship’s mainframe. In most cases it’s enough to slide them quickly all the way in a particular direction (as in the instances where someone beams themselves by pushing the sliders then running up to the platform), but manual operation would help even during everyday beaming, just to smooth out the process and maximize comfort for the transportees.

The direction of the sliders could easily be customizable: remember that operators are often seen resetting them all the way before transport, so if one were to push them all up, the actual transport would mean sliding them down and vice versa.

 

[Spock's Barber]

Those Transporter controls must be like the buttons on my television remote control...I just push all the buttons in random order until I get the damn thing to work.

 

[Mytran]

The direction of the sliders could easily be customizable: remember that operators are often seen resetting them all the way before transport, so if one were to push them all up, the actual transport would mean sliding them down and vice versa.

I must admit I've never seem them resetting the sliders in the way you describe. Is there an episode where this is particularly prominent?

 

[Henoch]

Obsession were Spock's cross-circuiting to B that recovered them...why was Scotty benched?

 

[Marsden]

I don't know what they did specifically, but when James Doohan was using them he really sold it that they were important the way he carefully moved them at different times and then part way through changed speed. A lot of the others just moved them and a few times they seemed to slap them all the way all at once like it really didn't matter.

My opinion is that they are fine tuners that just having a button or a flip switch wouldn't have such fine control, this would be more familiar to people of the 60s with analog controls on radios and TVs, now it's digital and you just hit a button, there's no more "tuning in" a station or channel.

 

[johnnybear]

I'm not sure if I've ever noticed the up or down movements but I know that TV in the old days was always like that! "Hey, Jim, Just move them up or down, no one will notice!"
JB

 

[uniderth]

My opinion is that they are fine tuners that just having a button or a flip switch wouldn't have such fine control, this would be more familiar to people of the 60s with analog controls on radios and TVs, now it's digital and you just hit a button, there's no more "tuning in" a station or channel.

Speaking of which, "The Cage" didn't have sliders did it. Wasn't the transporter console just a reuse of the helm/nav?