Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1408619
50 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2021 It's been a few months since the June edi- tion of Design007 Magazine was published, but since I missed the Star Trek theme of that issue, I hope you won't mind if I start with a related anecdote. Star Trek presented many fun gad- gets and gizmos to its audience that have influ- enced ingenuity and invention for over five decades now. Some of these influences are pretty obvious, such as flip cellphones, which enjoyed a lot of free marketing due to Star Trek's communicator. Be honest, back when you had one of those phones, how many of you were tempted to say "Kirk to Enterprise" when you flipped it open? Other innovations, like phasers and photon torpedoes, thankfully remain solely in the realm of science fiction (at least for now). Other than the starship itself, though, I think that most people would agree that the most interesting gadget on Star Trek was the transporter system. I am sure that the ability to beam out of danger, or a potentially embar- rassing moment in life, has tilted many imagi- nations other than just mine. But did you know that unlike phasers and warp speed, which are very standard accoutrements for a science fic- tion show, that the transporter was invented solely for budgetary reasons? When Gene Roddenberry was developing Star Trek, he realized that he couldn't afford to land a large spaceship multiple times in every episode. Even with the special effects of the time, it would have been too expensive to make it look even halfway realistic, yet he The Collaborative PCB Design Process— a Necessity for Efficient Manufacturing Tim's Takeaways Feature Column by Tim Haag, FIRST PAGE SAGE