Being an old guy around here and in the prop hobby most of my life, I've seen phasers and communicators and a bunch of other original stuff.
But only one tricorder. Saw one at the Smithsonian Exhibit and the same one at World Con.
Herocomm.com does a great job with the comms, and MR duplicated the phaser from Greg J.
How many tricorders were made?
How many still exist?
I am sure who has them is a guarded secret but, does anyone know any of this other info?
Good question and hopefully we may glean a little info here.
I was at a Trek Con around 1990 when a young man came up to me and asked if I could confirm if the Tric he had was indeed Screen-used.
It was a background Tric that was meant to be carried closed.
I forgot the story he told of how he aquired it but he seemed on the level and wanted to know if he had what he was told what he had.
I told him I could'nt help him but to ask George Takei what he thought.
George thought it could have been used on the show.
I'm sure Mike that you know there are some collectors that if they would go public with what is in there collections would solve a lot of mysterys!
There wa also, about 10 years ago, an "outing" opf a con artist who had been making replicas and going to extreme lengths to age them, like burying them in the ground for months, letting them sit in the sun for months, this fellow went as far as to put a used tootsie roll pop inside one and leave it long enough to leave a mark to relate to the story of Leonard dstoring his inside while shooting.
Apparently, this fellow had his wife and someone else helping him for years and finally one of them blew the lid on it.
It was a quiet business, selling one or two a year for exorbitant prices as authentic and they sold more than ever existed in the first place. The extreme secrecy had kept this under wraps until it was "out" and people started to compare notes.
Many props that people have had for 20 years turned out to be some of his replicas. Obviously the people who had been taken were embarrassed and I don't know what happened (if they sued, or got a rope.)
I do know that this served to push the originals even further underground though.
John Dwyer is probably the best one to ask about how many, though last time I asked him, he didn't recall. I have heard so many stories about people who "had one" and played with it as a kid from their uncle/father/grandfather/friend-of-the-family who "worked on the show and grabbed one as a souvenir when the show was cancelled."
Of course, they were long since destroyed and thrown out, in these stories, but who knows? It is entirely conceivable that several of these props ended up being given to kids and destroyed.
Wah Chang and Matt Jefferies also had ideas on where some of them were and how many but I never heard definitive numbers from either of them.
Maybe if this thread keep sgoing, we'll learn something!
so, BUMP.
Yeah John Dwyer's nick-name should be Irving!Vaderman said:
This is an area that gets harder to deal with every year due to the passage of time and loads of misinformation even from Paramount! The other problem is the influx of newbies that have been weened off the bad info.
One of the worst examples was to find out that Coyle had identified a Smithsonian exhibit as a fake...made by Jim Kirk!
The speculation is that the item was confiscated by the big P and was sitting around gathering dust when the Smithsonian came calling.
This was not the first time the S had dropped the ball. Many people remember the awful 'restoration' of the 1701 a few years ago where new details were added.
In a non ST vein, the S has yet to correct the invention of the airplane credit. They still claim it was the Wright Bros and not Pearse or Whitehead.
drusselmeyer said:
I have to jump in on that last bit....
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...ry/q0159.shtml
"what constitutes flight and what doesn't? The criteria most researchers have applied is a craft that could only sustain its flight thanks to the power of its engine and was fitted with a control system allowing the pilot to maintain his course. The flight must also be well-documented by first-hand witnesses, and perhaps most important of all, the flight must be repeatable. The accomplishments of the pioneers described above all fail on at least one of these criterion whereas the Wright Flyer does not. Most of these men even admitted themselves that they had not accomplished what the Wrights had done."
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