Science & Technology

Google built prototype Star Trek communicator

By T.K. Randall
November 24, 2015

Image: Leonard Nimoy
Credit: Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0 (adapted) The iconic device, which was frequently worn by the crew in Star Trek: The Next Generation, enabled Picard and his bridge officers to easily talk to one another wherever they might be.

While today the availability of modern smartphones has rendered this concept mostly obsolete, Google has revealed that it once tried to create a wireless communications device that could be worn on a person's clothes and tapped, just like in Star Trek, to turn its microphone on and off.The circular device was connected to a mobile phone via Bluetooth and was developed for the purpose of experimenting with new ways of asking Google's voice search to look something up.

"I always wanted that pin," said Google's senior vice president Amit Singhal. "You just ask it anything and it works. That's why we were like, ‘Let's go prototype that and see how it feels.'"

Unfortunately however the idea never managed to make it past the testing phase.

Source: TIME Magazine

Tags: Google, Star Trek