Communicators

Flip-up communicator, circa 2266

Insignia communicator, circa 2370

Wrist communicator, circa 2271

Communicators are personal communication devises used by Starfleet personnel, that provides voice transmissions from a planetary surface to an orbiting spacecraft, between members of a landing party, or where else communication is necessary. Communicators also provides a means for a ship's Transporter system to determine the exact coordinates of a crew member, for either transport back to the ship, or generally as a personnel locator. Early versions of the communicator were compact hand-held units with a flip-up antenna grid.

Starfleet briefly used wrist communicators, but more recent units have been incorporated into the Starfleet insignia worn on each crew member's uniform and had a dermal sensor that can be used to restrict usage to one authorized individual only. The devise is constructed of a crystalline composite of silicon, beryllium, carbon-70, and gold.

The modern insignia communicators has also a universal translator incorporated into it's design, that provides a real-time translation of spoken languages. It is not a very powerful translator, and works mainly on known forms for communication, but it is still a universal translator. The universal translator operates by sensing and comparing brain-wave frequencies, and then selecting comparable concepts to use as a basis for the translation.

How we at home, watching Star Trek on the TV screen can understand what the alien life forms are saying, is beyond my understanding, since the universal translators works the way it does. I guess a world wide secret organization has secretly conspired to incorporate a universal translator into every TV-set that views Star Trek, so that the viewers at home can understand what is being said by an alien life form. Any other theories ?

When the communicator was first "invented" in 1964, it seemed incredibly compact and amazingly advanced. Few people would have believed back in those times that Star Trek would still be on the air today when portable cellular telephones, the same size and smaller as those original flip-up communicators, are in fact a reality.