71 "So what is this pattern thing?" (Transporters - Star Trek)
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This article is from the Star Trek Tech FAQ, by Joshua Bell inexorabletash@hotmail.com with numerous contributions by others.
71 "So what is this pattern thing?" (Transporters - Star Trek)
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 "Lonely Among Us" [TNG], 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".)
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