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.

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Star Trek

  • 1940 M. Duclos Sabotage on Mars in Fantastic Adventures June 81/2 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.

  • 1957 G. R. Dickson Cloak & Stagger in Future Science Fiction Fall 29/2 page image 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.

  • 1959 G. R. Dickson The Catch in Astounding Science Fiction Apr. 73/1 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.

  • 1964 G. Roddenberry Cage (TV story outline) in S. E. Whitfield & G. Roddenberry Making of ‘Star Trek’ (1968) i. iv. 48 Gene Roddenberry

    The transporter…beams them to materialize on the planet surface far below.

  • 1967 J. Blish Star Trek 23 James Blish

    Simon van Gelder came aboard the Enterprise from the Tantalus Penal Colony via transporter.

  • 1981 V. N. McIntyre Entropy Effect v. 130 Vonda N. McIntyre

    Well…one could beam from one place, to the transporter room, then to another place.

  • 1995 D. W. Smith & K. K. Rusch Star Trek Voyager: Escape iii. 21

    The transporter dropped them on a hard, concrete-like surface near the south edge of the Station.

  • 2014 K. Akins Loop i. 1 page image 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.

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
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.