TRANSPORTERS AND REPLICATORS MINI-FAQ



   Last modified: Tue Jun 13 09:51:52 1995
   Maintained by: Joshua Bell <jsbell@acs.ucalgary.ca>
   Archive site (WWW): http://www.ucalgary.ca/~jsbell/star_trek.html
   FTP site (text versions): ftp.cc.umanitoba.ca:/startrek/minifaqs/
     _________________________________________________________________

   Copyright (C) 1995, Joshua Sean Bell. Not in the public domain.
   Permission to distribute this document, unedited and including this
   copyright notice is granted, provided no fees are charged for access
   beyond charges for downloading or connection time from a commercial
   information service. Publication of this document in a magazine or
   journal (in any media format) must be approved by the author.

   Star Trek (R), Star Trek: The Next Generation (R) and Star Trek: Deep
   Space Nine (R) are trademarks of Paramount Pictures registered in the
   United States Patent and Trademark Office. Star Trek: Voyager is a
   trademark of Paramount Pictures.
     _________________________________________________________________



Contents:

     * 1. Questions and Answers
     * 2. Credits
     * 3. References


     _________________________________________________________________

1. Questions and Answers



   "How does the transporter work?"

   While there is no absolute canonical answer, we can piece one together
   from various clues, that fits nearly everything seen on-screen, and in
   the TNG Tech Manual.

   We have some evidence of the inner workings of transporters, but not
   much. They employ Heisenberg compensators, pattern buffers, phase
   transition coils, Biofilters, matter streams, confinement beams, and
   matter-energy converters, and phased matter. As for what they do, we
   know that you are conscious during transport (STII:WoK, TNG "Realm of
   Fear"), but can also be held in stasis (TOS "Day of the Dove", TNG
   "Relics"). Further, while in transport, you appear whole to
   yourself.

   I hypothesize that the Annular Confinement Beam first locks onto, then
   disassembles the subect into phased matter, via the phase transition
   coils, causing it to take on a very energy-like state somewhat akin to
   plasma, called phased matter. The matter stream is then fed into the
   pattern buffer, piped through waveguide conduits to one of the beam
   emitters on the hull of the starship, and then relayed to a point on
   the ground where the ACB reconstructs the subject.

   ....

   "Excuse me, Annular Confinement Beam?"

   Yes. The ACB is where the phrase "Beam me up, Scotty!" comes from. The
   beam serves two purposes: The first is to maintain a "lock" on the
   subject, so the transporter knows what to beam out, and what to leave
   behind. The second purpose is to do the actual transporting, whilst
   keeping the subject in one piece subjectively.

   ....

   "How does the transporter know what to take and what to leave?"

   In TOS "The Enterprise Incident", the ship's scanners are able to
   differentiate a Vulcan from all of the Romulans aboard another ship.
   They are very sensitive, but also take a great deal of time. In many
   episodes, this sensitivity is not used. However, to scan at that level
   of resolution would take perhaps far longer than the crew has.

   In any case, the ACB generators are able to scan the target subject,
   and either using some best-guessing or asking the Transporter Chief,
   decide what should be transported with the subject.

   As one r.a.st.tech poster put it, "One to beam up, hold the bunny
   slippers." :)

   ....

   "So what is this pattern thing?"

   The pattern buffer is a cyclotron-like tank (TNG:TM) which holds the
   whirling matrix of phased matter in the ACB while the subject is
   beamed out and beamed in. In order to keep track of where every part
   of the subject is, the computer constructs a pattern to keep track of
   what bits of the stream end up where.

   An analogy would be the [left->right->left&down]->top pattern a
   television electron gun follows to paint a picture on the phosphors of
   the screen. The television (we're assuming an old analog no-frills
   model) doesn't know and can't possibly store the information needed to
   construct a one-hour program, but it has a pattern, and uses a
   modulated matter (electron) stream to do it.

   In TNG "Lonely Among Us", Picard is recovered from being beamed away
   as pure energy. The computer is able to reconstruct Picard by using
   the pattern it had stored, working with the phased matter stream that
   Picard's energy state itself supplied. Since the pattern was
   pre-transport, the reformed Picard had no memories of the excursion.

   Similar to this is the transporter ID trace, which is kept for
   verification purposes for a long time after transport. This is
   probably a highly compressed sample of the pattern, plus the name of
   the transportee, logs of the transport cycle, etc. (TNG "Data's Day".)


   ....

   "So what is a Heisenberg Compensator?"

   As Mike Okuda said when asked by Time (28 Nov 1994), "How do the
   Heisenberg compensators work ?" "They work just fine, thank you."
   [Benjamin Chee]

   In physics, the Heisenberg Principle states that you cannot know both
   the position of a subatomic particle and its momentum to a precise
   degree. The more you know about one, the less you know can about the
   other.

   This comes into play when you consider that to know where everything
   is coming from and going to, you pretty much have to know near-exactly
   where everything is. By the 24th century, evidently, that's no longer
   a problem. The Heisenberg Compensators are probably used to keep
   everything in the matter stream exactly where it should be.

   Note that this doesn't mean that the Heisenberg Compensators tell you
   the vital statistics of the particle; they could very well just
   compensate for not knowing them and keep the system working just fine,
   thank you.

   ....

   "How does that Biofilter gadget work?"

   The Biofilter is a good clue as to how the transport patterns work.
   The filter looks for elements of the pattern which aren't found in
   normal beings/equipment, or those of known viruses and bacteria. It
   can simply erase those parts of the pattern, and those parts of the
   matter stream won't beam back in.

   In TNG "Unnatural Selection", Pulaski is restored from an aged state
   by the use of the Biofilter. If Pulaski's altered DNA could be tagged
   as unwanted, the pattern could be tweaked to restore the DNA (its
   pretty much all the same molecules anyway, just shuffle some
   base-pairs around). As for her recovering instantly... well, it's a TV
   show.

   ....

   "What is pattern degredation?"

   The pattern is probably highly complex. Pattern degredation occurs
   because the Annular Confinement Beams aren't perfect, even with the
   help of the Heisenberg Compensators. The matter stream comes out of
   alignment with the computer's pattern predictions for where things
   should be. Obviously, this is a bad thing.

   According to the TNG Tech Manual, a subject can be suspended in
   transport for up to 420 seconds before the degredation is too severe
   to attempt to reform the transportee. They push close to this limit in
   "Realm of Fear".

   In TNG "Relics", we see that by keeping the transport controller
   locked in a diagnostic loop, pattern degredation is kept to a minimum
   - even with an old-style transporter, only 0.003% of the pattern was
   lost after 75 years in stasis.

   In TNG "Realm of Fear", the most extraordinary development is the
   reconstruction of the lost crew, and their appearance as the giant
   slugs while in transport. I suspect that the phased-matter "bugs"
   which reside in the plasma environment act as a natural ACB,
   maintaining the pattern of those "lost" in transport. The computer is
   able to use the Biofilter to rebuild the patterns and restore the
   individuals.

   ....

   "Where are you during transport?"

   Inside the ACB. TNG "Realm of Fear" shows what it looks like - lots of
   blue and silver sparkles. If you mean from an outside observer's point
   of view, you're either in one of the pattern buffers, or in transit to
   the beaming coordinates. In TOS "The Gamesters of Triskelion", Kirk
   and crew are lost during transport. In the technobabble that follows,
   Spock and McCoy discuss whether recovering the lost crewmembers from
   the transport beam, thought to be zipping away from the Enterprise, is
   possible. This means that if the beam was somehow suspended, a smart
   computer could reconstruct the pattern and beam you back in. This
   might be what happened in TNG "Realm of Fear". If the ACB environment
   is similar to a plasma field, the bugs could act as stabilizers. Long
   shot, but hey.

   ....

   "So was Scotty conscious for 75 years?" (TNG "Relics")

   Nope, or he would have starved - if your brain is working, your heart
   must be pumping blood, and it needs energy from somewhere. There are
   three possibilities for how this was accomplished:

   1) All transporters have an optional "statis" switch, that locks the
   pattern of the subject during transport. In other words, they are
   frozen on a quantum level.

   2) Old-style transporters, as seen in TOS, always transported the
   subject under stasis. From watching the show, we can see the two
   stages in a beamout. First, a sparkly pattern appears over the chest
   of the subject, and spreads to cover them. They are sometimes seen to
   move during this process. Then they start to have these yellow blobs
   appear as they fade out. They don't move during this second stage. We
   can speculate that there's a stasis field employed for some reason
   (technological limitations, safety, etc) during the actual transport
   stage with old technology. This style of transporter was present on
   the Jenolan ("Relics"), but is now obselete.

   3) Putting the transport controller in a diagnostic loop imposes
   stasis on the subject, as a byproduct of the process by which
   degredation is minimalized.

   Choice (3) is the most appealing to me.

   ....

   "What happens to the air when you beam in or beam out?"

   It is likely that during the beam-out process, air simply diffuses
   into the space previously occupied by the subject under transport.
   This happens slowly enough that there would be no pop, or any other
   sound, except perhaps a small hum or tinkling noise, depending on the
   dynamics of air interacting with the ACB.

   As for beaming in, the ACB lock on the target site probably gives the
   air a gentle "shove" out of the way, again with minimal noise. In the
   movies, we do see the beam sweep outwards before the subject
   materializes.

   ....

   "How can you transport without a transporter at the receiving end?"

   According to the TNG Tech Manual, the Enterprise hull sports emitter
   array pads at various sites on its surface. They utilize "long-range
   virtual-focus molecular imaging scanners" to handle remote disassembly
   of the subject, and facilitate reassembly. The ACB is tightly focused
   onto the target area from the ship. This is limited - in the TNG era,
   40,000 km is the safe range for transport.

   ....

   "So why in TOS episodes/TFS films did they beam from transporter room
   to transporter room?"

   Intraship transport in the TOS era was not very reliable. (TOS "Day of
   the Dove") Likely, when two compatible transport systems were
   available, the surface emitters could "interlock", and the pattern
   buffers would synchronize. One transport system would handle the
   dematerialization, and hand off the ACB to the receiving end for the
   rematerialization. This is much safer and likely requires less energy,
   and can be used to get around certain environmental difficulties. (TNG
   "Realm of Fear")

   ....

   "What happened at the start of Star Trek: The Motion Picture then, if
   it's so safe?"

   When the power on the receiving end of the transport failed, the
   transport computer on the Enterprise was unable to maintain the
   pattern integrity of the matter stream. This is akin to catastrophic
   degredation of the pattern. Kirk said "Boost your matter gain, we need
   more signal!" - perhaps indicating that the ACB could have been used
   to reconstruct the pattern. In any case, the hand-off appeared to have
   been nearly complete when the transportees began reforming on the pad.
   Since the Enterprise could not handle the transport, the matter stream
   was sent back to Starfleet HQ, in the hopes that enough of the pattern
   remained in the ACB to reconstruct them at the sending site. It
   wasn't, and the subjects died shortly thereafter.

   ....

   "And why can't Trills be transported?" (TNG "The Host")

   Odan said that transport would kill him. However, in DS9 "The
   Alternate", Dax is transported by a Federation transporter (aboard the
   Runabout), and suffers no ill effects. There are a few possibilities.

   The first is that Odan did not wish to reveal that he was a
   host/symbiont pair, perhaps because the knowledge would disrupt the
   negotiations, lead to suspicion, or because all Trill were keeping
   their symbiont nature a secret at the time.

   The second is that, not knowing that Trill are a joined species, the
   Biofilter might identify the slug part as a parasite and delete the
   pattern, killing both the host and the symbiont. If this is true, then
   simply by turning off/adjusting the Biofilter, Trills can transport
   like anyone else. Surely, once the unique nature of the Trill was
   revealed, the all Federation Biofilters would be reprogramed to ignore
   the symbiont.

   The third is that some Trill symbionts would be damaged by the
   transport process, and others wouldn't be. This is proposed in the
   Encyclopedia.

   ....

   "Can you transport through subspace?"

   In TNG "Data's Day", the use of a subspace carrier wave was mentioned
   as the method by which the transporter beam propagates.

   In TNG "Bloodlines", Bok has a subspace transporter, a technology
   which was researched but later abandoned by the Federation. The range
   is at least 300 billion kilometers, and at most several light years
   and the subject is put into a state of molecular flux. Doesn't sound
   healthy. How is this different than normal transport? Probably just a
   deeper level of subspace.

   ....

   "Why can't you be transported through shields?"

   If you could be transported through shields, they'd be pretty lousy
   shields. Just transport a bomb or boarding party over.

   Benjamin Chee points out:

     Just a thought here. Says in the TNG Tech Manual that phasers may be
     fired one-way through the ship's own shields due to EM polarization
     (whatever that means). If this holds true for other forms of wavicle
     energy, then one might be able to transport out one-way through
     shields, too.



   ....

   "But what about the time O'Brien used the shield frequencies..." (TNG
   "The Wounded")

   Shields must allow some energy through to allow sensors to operate. To
   be safe, these frequencies are cycled, allowing sensor windows. By
   knowing the shield cycles, and the right frequencies, it is be
   possible to adjust the transporter to work at those few open
   frequencies, and slip past the shields.

   Of course, if the destination ship detects you trying to beam through,
   they can alter the shield frequencies and end the transport suddenly,
   with rather messy results.

   ....

   "What about in TNG "Relics" - they didn't do anything special!"

   One would imagine that shields and transporters are one technological
   race, as sensors and cloaks are. The "enemy" is always trying to
   figure out a way to transport through your shields, and thus you must
   always be trying to improve your shields to block this. Hence, any
   70-year-old shields, like those on the Jenolan, would be transparent
   to modern transporters.

   Alternately, Geordi and Scotty knew that the Enterprise would have to
   beam them off the ship, and turned off the "transport blocking"
   frequencies in the shields.

   ....

   "How do replicators work?"

   Replicators are based on transporter technology. A sample object is
   first "scanned" into the memory of a computer. Because even a simple
   object takes up an enormous amount of memory, the object is only
   resolved at a molecular level, not a quantum level. Further, the data
   must be compressed using a lossy algorithm, meaning that small,
   undetectable approximations are made to the data. This gives the
   computer a pattern to create a duplicate of the original. (TNG TM)

   Starships have a small supply of bulk material that is constantly
   recycled into needed materials and items. When a request is made at a
   replicator terminal, the waveguide conduit system on the ship relays a
   small amount of bulk material to the replicator, which uses it to
   create the materials called for in the pattern. The object is then
   beamed in at the terminal.

   ....

   "Can replicators transmute elements?"

   Yes... sort of. There have been occasions on the show where some
   required element cannot be replicated. The Tech Manual talks about
   "quantum transformational manipulation", so they can do some quantum
   twiddling to get new elements. However, it also says that the energy
   costs are high for all forms of replication, and that food, since it's
   usually just different arrangements of the same basic things (water,
   proteins, lipids), is more practical to replicate from bulk matter
   than to store.

   In TNG "Night Terrors", when a certain substance is needed, Data says
   "We no longer have the power to reproduce complex elements in the
   replicator." This is evidence for the above.

   ....

   "What about gold-pressed latinum?"

   See above about energy costs and certain elements. It may be that 24th
   century technology can't transmute, say, elements above 140, and that
   latinum (in gold-pressed form) is a stable metal somewhere up there.
   Or, alternatively, it could take *exactly* the same amount of energy
   to replicate as it takes to mine/ manufacture, making it a good
   standard for monetary transactions.

   Here's what Mike Okuda and Rick Sternbach came up with when confronted
   with this question in the book The Making of DS9, c/o Benjamin Chee:

   Q: How could it be so valuable if it could be churned out by any
   replicator ?

   RS: Oh, well, Mike and I have had discussions about things like
   this... it might be that, you know, that the particular molecular
   structure just doesn't, you know, doesn't - Mike? Why can't you
   replicate latinum ?

   MO: Uh, it's because - uh, when - uh, it's because the um, the, uh,
   uh, the valence system and the molecular structure are, are arranged -
   the, uh, the, the, uh, replicator reads certain valence patterns - it
   recognizes that, that those are... copyguarded !

   Q: Copyguarded ?

   RS: Copyguarded! Oh, they're, they're 'nudged', sort of 'nudged
   quanta' and if they're -

   MO: Hey, we talked about this before.

   RS: That's right, that's right. Yes, and if they're, they're polarized
   in the, in the X plane, then they're, they're okay. If they're
   polarized in the Y-Z plane, then they're bogus.

   MO: Right.

   ....

   "What happens to the glasses when they're done with them?"

   The empty glasses, plates, etc, are put back in the replicator
   terminal (TNG "Timescape"), and returned as raw materials to the bulk
   matter store. It would make sense if they were only disassembled on
   the molecular level, as the energy needed to reform new glasses would
   be much lower than if they were broken down to the atomic level or
   quantum level.

   ....

   "Why don't they use replicators to do instant ship repair?"

   For minor repair, it might be feasable, but we rarely see any sort of
   repairs actually being done. When Geordi says "30 minutes at least,
   Captain", they might be replicating various components and using a
   transporter-effected swapout. Recall, however, that the transporters
   and replicators use a lot of power. The replicators go offline in
   Alert situations, for example. It would be foolish to rely on such a
   system to repair the ship in emergencies, but it is doubtless used at
   other time.

   For large scale repair, I think the TNG Tech Manual says it best: "...
   if you could make a starship at the touch of a button, you wouldn't
   need to..."

   ....

   "Can you make two Datas with the transporter?"

   No. It is not possible (with 24th century technology, at least) to
   replicate something at the quantum level. First, the amount of
   information needed to define a living, thinking being at that level of
   detail is incredibly large, far surpassing the computer capacity of
   any 24th century database. (TNG TM)

   Presumably, Data and other Soong-type androids which use positronic
   brains have components which function at a quantum, or sub-molecular
   level which cannot be easily replicated.

   Secondly, there is no way to scan at quantum resolution without
   destroying the subject. The transporter ACB need not know the precise
   details of every particle being transported - where they are and what
   they are doing is enough. Further, attempting to retrieve such
   information from the ACB would destroy it.

   To duplicate a living being, a hypothetical effect, which I call an
   Annular Confinement Beam-Splitter, would be needed. As the ACB was
   passed through it, along with a supply of raw phased matter, it would
   duplicate the ACB's contents in the raw stream.

   ....

   "Hey! What about "The Enemy Within" and "Second Chances" ?"

   For better or worse, no such device has been intentionally created by
   24th century science. However, in TOS "The Enemy Within", Kirk's
   duplication may have been caused by some accidental effect which
   caused an ACBS to form in the normal transporter mechanism, with
   disasterous results. The Encyclopedia says that damage to the the
   transporter's ionizer was the cause of the split.

   In TNG "Second Chances", the mechanism by which Riker is duplicated is
   explained in detail. During transport through severe atmospheric
   interference, the transporter chief locked onto Riker's signal with a
   second ACB. When it turned out not to be needed, the second signal was
   abandoned. The atmospheric interference caused the second ACB to be
   reflected back to the planet, and somehow the matter stream was
   duplicated, using phased matter from the atmospheric interference
   effect to provide the duplicate mass.

   ....

   "Could surgery be performed with a transporter?"

   It all depends on the surgery. For example - could I suspend you in
   transport, reform the pattern so that your arm is no longer broken,
   your skin is no longer cut, etc? Yes. But in sickbay they already have
   machines which do it near-instantly, and don't take the massive
   resources of the transporter.

   For such things as removing a tumor, you must consider what replaces
   the object being transported away. In all likelyhood, a vacuum. Having
   a small vacuum appear inside you body is probably more deadly than the
   tumor was in the first place.

   It has been suggested that you could synchronize two ACBs and beam in
   a saline solution in place of the tumor you are transporting out, but
   again, why bother? There are already medical devices which probably
   use micro-transporter technology to effect the surgery.

   ....

   "What about the time when... ?"

   Star Trek has "broken" the rules of transporters a number of times.
   There are very few glaring examples of misuse of the transporter as a
   plot device to save the day, but the worst include:

   TNG "Rascals" - Picard, Keiko, Guinan and Ro are turned into children
   in a freak transporter accident, and later restored. I won't even try.
   First off, the biology used in this episode is pure BS. Secondly, if a
   quick fix like this can alter the aging process, then by doing it
   intentionally, no-one will ever grow old and die again. Amusing
   episode, but it gets a thumbs down in the Treknology category.

   TNG "Unnatural Selection" - The transporter magically rejuvinates
   Pulaski. While the mechanism by which her cure works is relatively
   sound, the fact that she recovers instantly is anomalous. (See TNG
   "Man of The People" for a similar insta-heal.) Better to just not
   ask.

   TOS "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" - Somehow, the transporter is able to
   erase the memories of people by transporting a newer version of
   themselves over top of an older version. Talk about saving the day by
   transporter abuse!

   TOS "The Enemy Within" - While I can buy the duplication effect, and
   maybe even the two disperate personas of the two Kirks, I think the
   recombination of the two was pushing the technology a little bit.

   ....

   "What about souls?"

   Heh. Well, if you've already decided that Star Trek transporters and
   souls don't get along, then accept that your position has been made
   abundantly clear in the past, and don't bother to followup. Souls
   aren't precluded by transporters, they just require that somehow,
   souls can (1) "tag along" with the physical body through transport,
   (2) stay in stasis along with a body, and (3) be duplicated. Since
   there isn't (and many maintain, there can't be) any way of analyzing
   this hypothetical "soul", it makes little sense to argue about what it
   can and cannot do.

   ....

   "Can you transport while in Warp?"

   Yes. According to the TM and "Best of Both Worlds, Part II", if you're
   in Warp you can transport as long as you are both at the same Warp
   value. The TM says "integral warp value", but in BOBWII they were
   chasing the Borg ship at, I believe, warp 9.6 or something similar.

   H. Peter Anvin offers:

     I think the intent of the phrase "integral warp value" means
     anything with the same integer number, i.e. 8 <= warp < 9; so in
     BOBWII the big E would only have had to exceed Warp 9 in order to
     make this possible. The TM makes it abundantly clear that a
     transition occurs at integral warp factors (and we deduce that to be
     the reason the warp scale changed between TOS and TNG) so I think it
     makes a lot of sense.



   Possible. However, doesn't O'Brien say "Matching warp velocities for
   transport" or something quite similar? They'd have to be going at
   nearly the same velocity already to keep up with the Borg ship, so
   matching velocities could only refer to fine tuning.

   In TNG "Force of Nature", they transport from a stationary ship while
   falling out of warp in an area of massive subspace instability. It
   could be that since they aren't actively generating a warp field of
   any level they can get away with transport.

   ....

   "What happened in "The Schizoid Man" ?"

   The Enterprise dropped out of warp for a fraction of a second, and
   engage the transport system. Troi reported feeling like she was inside
   the wall for a moment. It appears that the matter stream falls out of
   the ACB before transport is quite complete. Definitely a nasty thing
   if things aren't perfect.


     _________________________________________________________________

2. Credits:


    John F. Meyer Jr. <gtd322a@prism.gatech.edu>


    Erik Ebert <erik_e1@verifone.com>


    H. Peter Anvin <hpa@nwu.edu>


    Benjamin Chee <cheeweit@iscs.nus.sg>


     _________________________________________________________________

3. References:



    See the Reading List Mini-FAQ for full details on the volumes
   mentioned above and below.

   More recently presented information is considered to supercede old
   information, unless the weight of the evidence supports the original
   data.

   Greatest faith is placed on aired live-action material (canon) and
   documents produced by or quoting the production crews for Star Trek
   (quasi-canon), most notably the technical advisors to TNG, DS9 and
   VOY: Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach.

   Other materials are not considered reliable sources of information,
   and anything gleaned from these is of questionable relevance.

   Canonical material:
     * Star Trek: Voyager [VOY]
     * Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [DS9]
     * Star Trek: The Next Generation [TNG]
     * Star Trek feature films [TFS]
     * Classic Star Trek [TOS]

   Quasi-canonical material:
     * The Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future
       (Encyc)
     * Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future (Chron)
     * Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (TM)

   Questionable (but useful) materials:
     * The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion
       - contains some behind-the-scenes notes of interest
     * Other episode guides (Compendium, Concordance, etc)
       - useful, esp. for spellings and details
     * The Making of Star Trek
       - contains Roddenberry-approved TOS ship systems info
     * Episode scripts
       - spellings and fiddly details, except where they say [TECH]
     * Trading and playing cards (esp. Skybox)
       - technical stuff often prepared by production staff

   Material that is ignored (other than where it reproduces material from
   the above, e.g. photographs, descriptions, etc.):
     * Star Trek: The Animated Series [TAS]
     * Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise
     * Worlds of the Federation (WoF)
     * Star Fleet Technical Manual (SFTM)
     * Starlog's Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Journal (TJ)
     * Other "reference" guides
     * Novels, incl. novelizations of films and episodes
     * Blueprints, drawings, photographs, models, etc.


     _________________________________________________________________

   Joshua Sean Bell <jsbell@acs.ucalgary.ca>