Beyond Star Trek's fictional innovations

The Star Trek franchise inspired some designers of technologies, such as the Palm PDA and the handheld mobile phone.[65][66] Michael Jones, Chief technologist of Google Earth, has cited the tricorder's mapping capability as one inspiration in the development of Keyhole/Google Earth.[67] It also brought teleportation to popular attention with its depiction of "matter-energy transport", with phrases such as famous misquoted "Beam me up, Scotty" entering the vernacular.[68] In 1976, following a letter-writing campaign, NASA named its prototype space shuttle Enterprise, after the fictional starship.[69] Later, the introductory sequence to Star Trek: Enterprise included footage of this shuttle which, along with images of a naval sailing vessel called the Enterprise, depicted the advancement of human transportation technology.

Beyond Star Trek's fictional innovations, its contributions to TV history included a multicultural and multiracial cast. While more common in subsequent years, in the 1960s it was controversial to feature an Enterprise crew that included a Japanese helmsman, a Russian navigator, a black female communications officer, and a Vulcan-Terran first officer. Captain Kirk's and Lt. Uhura's kiss, in the episode Plato's Stepchildren, was also daring, and is often mis-cited as being American television's first scripted, interracial kiss, even though several other interracial kisses predated this one