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Monday, April 11, 2011
1978 Article on Trek's Computers
The short-lived but awesome magazine Science Fantasy Film Classics met an undeserved and early end, but the several issues I have are some of my most treasured mags from the time. I've posted material from issue #3 before, but it's so jam-packed with different Trek articles that it's time to feature it again. Reading this 1978 indepth look at (and practically a dissertation on) the technology behind the computers seen on Star Trek, is interesting from today's perspective and in light of computing advances. The article is actually a reprint of a 1977 article from the computer magazine Byte, so it's written with a little more authority than one might expect from a SF/fantasy mag.
Bonus: below, from the same issue, a nice painting of the Enterprise defending K-7 from attack by the Romulans and Klingons.
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4 comments:
Fascinating! A great assessment of Star Trek computers, although some facts are dated by now (reading about the problems of image storage was quite amusing though).
What a fun read - and ditto on finding the image storage problems section of the article amusing. Given the enormous amount of daa and ultrafast retrieval of it aboard the Enterprise, thee's no doubt that they use a system far different than what we do for computer systems. That's suggested with Daystrom's duotronics and the spin-off series Voyager implied that organic elements were incorporated into the ship computer system. I'd suggest it's a system more advanced that even quantum computing can provide. Glad to see your back, Frederick!
Totally amazing collection! I noticed a Leaf card on the other page. Do you have more of them?
I do, you can find all of them that I have posted so far by clicking on the "cards" tag on the right hand side of the page.
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