transporter n.
a device for conveying people or things instantaneously from one place to another, esp. a machine which converts matter into energy, individual atoms, information, etc., and transmits it in this form to another location where it is reconstituted; = matter transmitter n.
See also matter transporter n..
Associated chiefly with Star Trek, but in use earlier.
SF Encyclopedia
Memory Alpha
Wikipedia
Star Trek
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1940
page image
Maurice Duclos
bibliography
I'm aiming my atom transporter at Earth. I'm going to try to pick something on Earth, break it into its primordial atoms, whisk them up here to Mars and then assemble them to their former shape in the converter down on the laboratory floor.
Sabotage on Mars in Fantastic Adventures June 81/2 -
1957
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Gordon R. Dickson
bibliography
Hey…is this the gimmick that does the transporting?… It makes sense… This is the transporter, or whatever it was. And it’s been damaged.
Cloak & Stagger in Future Science Fiction Fall 29/2 -
1959
page image
Gordon R. Dickson
bibliography
The trip through the transporter was, so far as Mike and Penny had any way of telling, instantaneous and painless. They stepped through a door-shaped opaqueness and found themselves in a city.
The Catch in Astounding Science Fiction Apr. 73/1 -
1964
Gene Roddenberry
The transporter…beams them to materialize on the planet surface far below.
Cage (TV story outline) in S. E. Whitfield & G. Roddenberry Making of ‘Star Trek’ (1968) i. iv. 48 -
1967
James Blish
Simon van Gelder came aboard the Enterprise from the Tantalus Penal Colony via transporter.
Star Trek 23 -
1981
Vonda N. McIntyre
Well…one could beam from one place, to the transporter room, then to another place.
Entropy Effect v. 130 -
1995
The transporter dropped them on a hard, concrete-like surface near the south edge of the Station.
Star Trek Voyager: Escape iii. 21 -
2014
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Karen Akins
bibliography
Don’t get me wrong. I love a good transporter prank as much as the next girl, but plop me in the middle of Lex and Concord? I am not having that crap.
Loop i. 1
Research requirements
antedating 1940
Earliest cite
Maurice Duclos
Research History
Ben Ostrowsky submitted a 2014 cite from Karen Akins.
Last modified 2021-09-19 15:58:49
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entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.