🚀 go-pugleaf

 juola@bruno.cs.colorado.edu (Patrick Juola) writes:
 : xeno@iastate.edu (Gary L Snethen) writes:
 : >As I recall from long ago, a phaser is basically a laser that fires several
 : >frequencies in harmony --- such as a chord of three frequencies of coherent
 : >light.
 : Um, I don't know where you're remembering from, but it's far off the mark.
 : A phaser is an unexplained plot device created by Gene Roddenberry in
 : a television show of the late 60's called _Star_Trek.  It has absolutely
 : no technological basis.

In the book 'The Making of Star Trek' (published around 1969-70 or so), Gene
Roddenberry said that they considered 'laser' for the weapon, but decided
against it for the reason that that name would date it to the 60's era too
strongly. (Quite forward thinking, in tune with the other concepts introduced
on the show). They played around with variations and came up with 'phaser'.
If anyone's interested, I'll look it up again and quote the relevant section
from this book.

Steven Malikoff.
steven@syacus.acus.oz.au