What does the "tri" mean in tricorder?
- Thread starter Duane
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It's a sensor/computer/data recorder. I believe it was inspired by the portable cassette recorders that were fairly new at the time, but they tacked on sensor and computer functions as well as a recording function, so it was a "trifunction recorder," or "tricorder."
"Bicorder" sounds sick and wrong, so "Tricorder" it is.
Smell.
Fairly silly explanations all, though. Quite regardless of whether they are what the inventors of the word intended or not.
We could safely assume that the prefix is undecipherable by 21st century logic, just as an early 20th century person would have no hope understanding what "flash" in "flash memory" or "cell" in "cell phone" means - or where "googling" comes from. There need not be any connection to the number three in the prefix "tri", really.
Timo Saloniemi
We could safely assume that the prefix is undecipherable by 21st century logic, just as an early 20th century person would have no hope understanding what "flash" in "flash memory" or "cell" in "cell phone" means - or where "googling" comes from. There need not be any connection to the number three in the prefix "tri", really.
Timo Saloniemi
I'm just trusting my fallible memory here, but I seemed to remember reading (perhaps in one of the Making of or World of Star Trek books from the lat 60's early 70's) that the "tri" referred not to three different things it could record, but to three differing functions. The way it was, in fact, used in the show would seem to support that.
It was a recording device, as we frequently see crew members using it to record logs or images. I remember both Uhura and Spock used it as a camcorder in City...
It was a portable sensor unit also. In fact, Spock used it for that most of the time, taking sensor readings on landing party missions to search for life forms, or certain substances, etc. Bones could also use his specially programmed tricorder for medical diagnostics, but in that case it was still basically a sensor unit, although programmed for a specific sensory function.
The third function is a little more murky. I get the impression that it could also be used as a handheld PC. Spock used it that way in City... also. It was obvious from close-up photos of it, that it contained a disk drive, with multiple interchangable disk storage units seen in the front, just below the display screen. Projecting 300 hundred years in the future from our own storage capacity in small flash drives, I would imagine that bank of a half-dozen silvery discs could probably hold the equivalent of all our world's current knowledge database. This supports the scene of Spock's data-retrieval effort in City... down to newspaper article images with zoom ability. Those disks would have to have enormous storage capacity for something like that.
I don't remember, off-hand, if anyone ever used it as a communicator also, since anyone with a tricorder usually had a communicator with them. But I don't see why it couldn't have had that functionality.
It was a recording device, as we frequently see crew members using it to record logs or images. I remember both Uhura and Spock used it as a camcorder in City...
It was a portable sensor unit also. In fact, Spock used it for that most of the time, taking sensor readings on landing party missions to search for life forms, or certain substances, etc. Bones could also use his specially programmed tricorder for medical diagnostics, but in that case it was still basically a sensor unit, although programmed for a specific sensory function.
The third function is a little more murky. I get the impression that it could also be used as a handheld PC. Spock used it that way in City... also. It was obvious from close-up photos of it, that it contained a disk drive, with multiple interchangable disk storage units seen in the front, just below the display screen. Projecting 300 hundred years in the future from our own storage capacity in small flash drives, I would imagine that bank of a half-dozen silvery discs could probably hold the equivalent of all our world's current knowledge database. This supports the scene of Spock's data-retrieval effort in City... down to newspaper article images with zoom ability. Those disks would have to have enormous storage capacity for something like that.
I don't remember, off-hand, if anyone ever used it as a communicator also, since anyone with a tricorder usually had a communicator with them. But I don't see why it couldn't have had that functionality.
MeanJoePhaser
Admiral
There is no tri.
Call them do-corders or do-not-corders.
Call them do-corders or do-not-corders.
Okay, I should've cited my sources so that there wouldn't be any doubt. From The Making of Star Trek, page 174 (emphasis added):
And from the Star Trek Encyclopedia entry (emphasis added):
So that is definitely the explanation: sensor, computer, recorder.
And from the Star Trek Encyclopedia entry (emphasis added):
So that is definitely the explanation: sensor, computer, recorder.
Inside the safety of my own skull, I'd always imagined that the tricorder had three modes of operation, 1) Einsteinian phenomenon, the EM spectrum, gravity, matter and neutrinos. 2) FTL phenomenon, warp drives and the like, and 3) subspace phenomenon.
Sensors, Computers and Recorders may have made sense in the transistor age of the sixties, but today when you can have all three integrated on one piece of silicon it makes less sense.
Sensors, Computers and Recorders may have made sense in the transistor age of the sixties, but today when you can have all three integrated on one piece of silicon it makes less sense.
That doesn't make much sense for a handheld instrument used on landing parties.
It makes perfect sense to me
It's a future world with a science sufficently advanced to be considered magic. It would make sense that any instrumentalities would reflect the future understanding of physics.
In Trek we have three aspects to science, that which we recognise, the technobabble that corresponds to our view of physics. Then we have that associated with the fantasy of Trek, faster than light phenomenon, then the magic subspace that allows ships to be sensed instantaneously from light years away, that allows immediate communication from similar distances. It follows that any future sensing device would also look beyond the EM spectrum. A simple EM sensor wouldn't be able to tell you if someone is beaming from A to B, if there is a starship in orbit, or temporal fluctuations, or WARP PARTICLES!
Watch an episode of CSI, and you'll see tricorder like gizmos being used regularly. I remember one episode that had a device that was used to scan for a rat that had eaten a bullet. And the lines between sensor, computer and recorder are blurring. There's no tape or disc in the average mp3 player.
Just because a device is multipurpose, it doesn't mean that it is perfect in all modes. It may only be able to sense certain phenomenon, and not discriminate, for which you'll need a lab on a starship.
Finally, sensor, computer recorder also leaves out one of a tricorders more important functions, that of transmitter. How many times have we seen a tricorder used to emit a signal?
A bicorder, in the 31st century, will be a robot that swings both ways-- from human to robot and back again.
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