Pop Culture Series: Star Trek
History of Star Trek: 58 Years Ago
Then and Now
Star Trek premiered on NBC TV on September 8, 1966… 58 years ago. It is my favorite show; I was glued to the TV for the first episode and every one after that. It had a significant influence on my life in my choice of a career in technology.
The show represented an optimistic vision of the future where challenges of poverty and hunger had already been addressed. However, many other issues — relevant to the ’60s — were depicted as still being wrestled with centuries into the future. The Original Series showed a utopian view of science fiction that was somewhat different from current dystopian Sci-Fi TV and movies. The franchise is still creating new shows, as I’ll describe below.
Star Trek did not just envision the future; it imagined it and helped drive it. It inspired generations of scientists, engineers, and technologists around the world. Many scientists today will say that Star Trek influenced the projects they are working on, especially in space exploration, physics, optics, electronics, computing, and communication — as I’ll recount near the end of this article.
Though the original show ended in 1969, the dream of exploration did not die; it lived on: six weeks later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon…
