this is Jim from Trek world and today we’re going to do something that’s never been done before in Star Trek fandom we’re going to look at a simple single prop initially built in Phoenix Arizona and we’re going to follow it along as it conducts a 40-year plus voyage that by the time it’s done we’ll have taken it well over 3200 miles so join me after the break as fans just like you and I share their stories of encounters with a Galileo using exclusive photos videos and narrative that has never been publicly available until now please be sure to check out these other popular videos about season one and our series covering Star Trek in the 1960s and also please be sure to hit that like button below the video so that YouTube will recommend this video to other folks who have not yet discovered it please remember that you can submit your photos videos and other documents to us directly on the web at submit.trek dashworld.com
but some of you may have known that we did our initial video on the Galileo earlier this year and it told the story of the Galileo’s Voyage from one Coast to the other and how it had been restored numerous times as well as the people who actually owned it from time to time needless to say we got quite a good response to that and in those responses came a lot of human interest stories so it seemed to me that a really good way to follow that up would be to go back let’s look at the beginning of time when the Galileo was built and very slowly we’re going to walk all the way up to present day but we’re going to do it based off the comments and information that are provided by you the viewers now one of the very first comments on that video came through concerning the Galileo from YouTube member Chauvin Emmons when he said we built that thing oh my God it was built in Phoenix Arizona by Dynamic machine which is still in business but both my father and Jim
Stewart are dead I don’t know if anybody that I would even know still works there it was made by a bunch of routers and drag racers now I checked the address and dynamic machine is currently located at a different street than the building that housed Gene Winfield’s AMT Speeding Customs division however Dynamic machines was founded about the same time that AMT shut its doors down and pulled the speeding custom division shot back to the West Coast so there’s definitely very strong possibility of some overlap and even more so I’m pretty sure that anybody that actually worked for Gene that decided they were not going to follow him all the way out to California probably looked for jobs at companies just like this now I’ve not been able to actually get information from Dynamic machine just yet but I did reach out to them asking them if anyone in their team could remember back to the time that the Galileo was built by genes
speed and Customs division and is there anybody there now that did that I haven’t received any response to them up to this point but if I do you’ll be the first to know in our community tab page but after Star Trek was canceled in 1969 smaller set pieces were claimed by numerous cast and crew members after all the dust settled Paramount found themselves still in possession of two rather large filming props the first was the 11 foot Studio model the USS Enterprise and the second was a 22 foot long three-quarter scalecraft Galileo used only a handful of times in the series the very last time it appeared in the series was for an episode called the way to Eden now before we move on to the next person involved in our story it should be mentioned that the Galileo was unfinished and hollow inside as this was way too small for them to fit cameras and actors inside of it so AMT also built an entirely separate set that could be made to look like the actors
were really inside the Galileo the set was built using smaller four foot sections for the sides and a larger section for the front they were all on Wheels and what you see right here is a very rare photograph of the front bow portion of the Galileo as would have been seen from inside the set so let’s use a little digital magic here and that little morph gives you a pretty good idea of exactly how it looked obviously in the black and white photograph that I had and how it appeared in the Galileo 7. so as I said Star Trek had been canceled in 1969 Paramount decided to donate the shuttle to the foundation for the junior blind in Los Angeles for young students to use it as a play thing now unfortunately there were a lot of sharp surfaces and edges that sort of made it unsafe for children even more so the visually impaired children the children kept bumping into the sharp edges inevitably the foundation would make the decision to part with a Galileo here at the very
earliest stage of the galio’s post Studio life that we got our very first encounter comments we’ll start right now with a comment from Joel Johnson who amazingly actually attended the foundation as a child oh my God growing up I wasn’t really a fan of Star Trek I’m partially sighted and I went to the foundation for the junior blind in Los Angeles watching this video Jarred my memories of playing in the Galileo as a child now I have to admit that while it never actually occurred to me that partially sighted children would have actually been there at the foundation for the Blind and remembered it but that is precisely the story that he just shared with us at around the same time we heard from Jeff Le bear who gave us a few really important pieces of information as Jeff said I worked for both the Braille Institute and the foundation of the junior blind
at different times in the 1960s I distinctly remember the Galileo being in the back of the large campus at 5300 Angeles Vista Boulevard it had no interior but was in pretty good shape though A bit worse for the environment as mentioned we mostly kept the kids away from it for the reasons mentioned now the first very important piece of information that we got from Jeff was the address of the foundation itself up until that moment I couldn’t have been really certain that the foundation hadn’t relocated over the years in addition to that Jeff confirmed to us that the Galileo was in fact empty when it arrived at the foundation while this is exactly what you and I should have expected having him confirm will greatly figure into another viewer’s experience with a Galileo several years later and the stories kept coming in viewer Grove dust actually provided Clarity in the fact that the foundation of the junior blind and the Braille Institute were
actually two different institutions as he said I want to add a little correction the Galileo was donated to the foundation of the junior blind not the Braille Institute I lived near the foundation and saw the Galileo there every day and watched over the years as the weather tried to destroy it so his comments give us a few other pieces to the puzzle because he’d actually lived near the foundation he actually saw the Galileo every day for several years until his input we didn’t really have an idea of how long the Galileo was at the foundation before it was sold now interestingly enough a lot of people magazines websites forums even my previous video identified that the Braille Institute was where it had been donated to that was incorrect it was actually donated to the foundation of the junior blind a completely different school and this still is listed incorrectly on Star trek.com to this day now no one ever
caught the mistake but it’s sort of expected remember because everybody thought it was the Braille Institute no one ever knew to ask about the foundation for the junior blind so anytime somebody would try to reach out to the Braille Institute and find out information about it of course the Braille Institute would come back empty now another wonderful piece of Grove dot story was he was actually there and saw the very day that Paramount delivered the Galileo to the foundation remember now the Galileo was large roughly 22 feet long right about eight somewhere between eight and nine feet high and about 12 feet wide to hear him say it also I guess the Galileo would have come to the foundation in 1969 when that was when Star Trek toss was canceled a huge crane lifted the Galileo over the chain link fence and gently deposited onto what seemed to be a huge grassy Playground now as a kid I was in awe as though this beauty were actually Landing
from space man I haven’t thought about this stuff in a hundred years thanks again okay they actually used a crane to lift it off the flatbed truck and place it over the chain-link fence into the grass now I’m still not exactly sure where on the lawn the Galileo sat you can clearly see in the above photo today the same grassy area referred to by both brodos and Jeff in their stories now before we move on to some other fun things I really want to take a time for us to acknowledge and show a little respect where it is due if it had not been for the foundation agreeing to take custody of the Galileo it would have been scrapped within a week probably at that point and we would have lost her a long time ago over five decades later the foundation today is a significant provider of care and services for many classes of Children and Families in the Los Angeles area no
matter what their physical challenges may be please do us a favor and spend a few minutes after this video to check out their website and look over the amazing jobs that these people have done and are continuing to do to this very day you’ll find a link to the website in the description if you’re looking for a nice charitable organization to donate to please give these folks some serious thought oh as the years went Slowly by the Galileo began to sustain damage from the weather in the meantime as we already heard the foundation by that time had actively begun to keep the children away from the Galileo due to the possibility of getting hurt but none of this happened all at once but rather over the course of a few years which is why Joel remembered playing in the Galileo and Jeff remembered keeping kids away from it however just a small distance Southwest of the foundation is where the next chapter of our story will unfold and let’s begin that conversation with a
comment from B.A Ashton I grew up in the area of Los Angeles known as Palos Verdes peninsula in the subdivision of Westfield in the early 70s and the full-size model of the Galileo was sitting in the front yard of a house on Rainbow Ridge Road as a kid it was a cool Monument to the TV series now another very important piece of information was given to me in this comment and that is that the house that held the Galileo was on Rainbow Ridge Road you would be surprised if you actually tried to Google it or do research on how difficult it is to actually nail that street name down in association with the Galileo right now let’s go back to that property which was the home of Robert Heisman now Robert had a teenage son named Roger who told his dad that he wanted the Galileo now obviously the heismans knew where the Galileo was currently being kept a lot of people did it wasn’t hidden while it was at the foundation he reportedly
offered the foundation 150 in exchange for the Galileo and that is precisely how the Galileo ended up sitting in a front driveway of a residential home for the next several years now I have been able to positively identify the home where Roger lived through real estate records in fact the house was sold just this summer for about two million dollars I wonder if the people there today have any idea how significant their home is within the adults of Star Trek history if you own this home and you find this video give me a comment I’d love to talk to you anyhow this is where the story gets more details as Roger was extremely active amongst the local science fiction fan community at that time so word literally spread far and wide that the Galileo had found a new home and this time she wasn’t tucked away far on the other side of a fence
all right so almost a year ago this entire Galileo adventure of research began for me when I stumbled across some photos that had been taken in heisen’s yard we had seen a lot of old black and white photos there was no surprise there but these photos appeared to be significantly higher in quality to any other photos I had seen at that time so I reached out to the photographer and they graciously gave me the permission to use those photos you see here one on the screen right now Michelle Evans is the photographer and I will be forever indebted to her for not only letting me use her photos but for planting this is the seed that brought me and the Galileo and you together Michelle Evans was able to date the photos to June 1975. June 20th actually to be precise no one else has ever identified in any of the other photos we’ve seen the time that the photo took place it’ll always say mid-1970s or maybe sometime between
75 and 77 no one ever recorded any dates and times now another key piece of information that Michelle was able to provide us was that the small hole just to the left of the galio’s door was caused by a brick been thrown at the Galileo in May of 1975 by an Irate neighbor ever since she told me that I’ve been looking for photos or videos of the Galileo that depict the shuttle without that hole to date I found none obviously anybody who may possibly have information on it while it was at the foundation for the junior blind would have that kind of information which is a perfect time for me to remind you that you can submit photos videos files narratives whatever you like to us directly on the web at submit.trek dashworld.com if you have anything pertaining especially to the foundation of the junior blind please reach out to me you can also reach me at email Jim weirdnashville.com and Michelle told me one nice thing when
I was there was that he Roger did open it up so that Phil and I could see inside now unfortunately I didn’t have a flash Cube so taking a photo of the interior was not really possible however it should be noted that he had also acquired one of the seats that was used in the Galileo and his hopes have been to reproduce these and do the entire interior restoration now of course that never happened but it is a nice dream in his backyard we also saw the robot from Lost in Space B9 so as before from other sources Michelle just gave us two other pieces of critical information one Roger had acquired one of the seats that had been used in the series now remember these seats were never in the three-quarter scale Galileo they were only used in the interior sets used for filming the actors quote unquote inside the Galileo now also remember that Jeff told us earlier the Galileo had no interior at
all when it was at the foundation well Roger told Michelle that he intended to recreate the entire interior set within the Galileo so he clearly intended to do restoration work now in addition to local fan groups author David Gerald actually mentioned Heisman by name and the fact that the Galileo was in his front yard in a passage taken from the world of Star Trek David says in Los Angeles a fellow named Roger Heisman managed to glom onto the original Enterprise shuttlecraft the full-sized mock-up that was used in several episodes particularly in the Galileo 7. he kept it on his front lawn with the intention of restoring it inside and out the interior of the shuttlecraft never had an actual set inside of it Heisman is building one he also made himself a Star Trek uniform and props such as phasers to communicators his props were so accurate that they were indistinguishable from the original Originals now that’s quite a fair piece
of Praise remember David Gerald wrote The Trouble with Tribbles so this type of Praise does not come lightly and because of that we’re going to circle around to that in a minute or two now David’s first book was printed in 1973. so that substantiates the fact that the Galileo came into heisen’s custody no later than 1972. with the foundation getting her in 69. the locals and the employees said it was at the foundation for more than a single year that means she was at the foundation until at least 1971. so he could have acquired it from late 1971 into 1972. now in the meantime Mark Holmes talks about his encounter my Star Trek Club in Sacramento the Sacramento Valley star star Star Trek Association for Revival we tried to buy the shuttle when it was rotting away in Palos Verde several members went down there and tried to buy it but the owner wouldn’t sell I recall seeing pictures of it being shown at the meeting they were slides as our club was very large for the time usually we had about 60 to 80 members attend and a total membership
of over 1200 in the early 70s it was a great club now just as what had happened in the foundation for the junior blind the Galileo sat in heisman’s yard for several years each year its condition got worse and worse it did not take long for his neighbors to begin complaining that the shuttle was an eyesore now at this point Heisman decided to try to find a new home for the shuttle like every other owner who has ever taken cussia Galileo he contacted the Smithsonian but the problem was it was simply too big to Warrant the floor space and in all honesty let’s face it the Smithsonian was still a good 10 years away from actually beginning to understand and appreciate the true value of the Enterprise model that they had taken as a donation Heisman would then Place ads in various magazines offering a shuttle for sale but could never reach an agreement with any possible buyers also his reaction to offers to buy the Galileo was mixed depending on the person now this little digital morph that we just saw represents the passage of time on the Heisman yard the first
photo was taken no later than the spring of 1975 whereas the second photo shows the same angle but after about a two-year period now back when I was researching photos for that first Galileo video I across this photo now no one seemed to know when it was taken or who the four young gentlemen were who posed in it I literally thought to myself at that time wouldn’t it be neat if I could figure out who these guys were I decided to include the photo in the video and asked for anyone who had information about it to please contact me ironically that train of thought is what led to this current video series the first in a series of videos on people who encountered the Galileo and how it affected them by Rosetta Stone so to speak was a comment by John Adams who was able to positively identify at least one of the people in the photo but I always remember Roger telling me the correct way to spell his name he is man Heisman went to his house several times in previous dates the shuttle was
somewhat decrepit by then maybe in 1975 at the 16 minute 25 second Mark in your video there are four photos of various people posing with or on the Galileo the young man in the upper left frame dressed as Captain Kirk had a legal last name of Johnson now I believe he was a friend of Roger he all always went by Jim or James T Kirk and might have even been in the process of changing it legally Charles Johnson indeed was that young man and he also did legally change his name to Jim Kirk he became quite well known in fandom for the quality of his later prop reproductions he was the first person in company to offer full-sized high quality props to the general public way back in 1977. he had a company called Starfleet command and sold phasers tricorders communicators from 1977 to 1996 before he finally retired you could find these at
conventions way back then and through mail order catalogs they were the best props available on the open market those days and they still hold up pretty well even today now another clue came through as to one of the other people so it was told to me that the young man in blue was Charles Weir and I found him believe it or not on Facebook why not he was kind enough to identify the last two people in the photo Steve stockbarger and Greg turnbow you may remember that I told you we were going to come back and talk about the Heisman props as John Adams had told me Heisman had metal molds made of the original Communicator including the hydro-formed metal antenna screen I believe Roger had one or more of the original set communicators as well and I know there was a tricorder floating around but I think it was a replica now what you see here are three close-up beautiful photographs of the props that Heisman had made in the mid-1970s these photos taken all those years ago while
the Galileo was still in Heisman front yard are part of a private collection that has never been visible or available to the American public I need to thank Mr David silver for that and you’ll hear more about him in a few minutes now amazingly enough here are two photos taken this year of a Heisman phaser and Communicator as you can see even after almost a half century the quality is still amazingly remarkable now of course like we had mentioned I started receiving comments and photos from the other fans as well uh I want to go back to PA Ashton once again another comment that he gave me was you know when I was a kid Star Trek was a weekly event even my dad enjoyed watching Spock was his favorite character but to have the actual movie prop just down the street from me was pretty cool now I mentioned David silver a moment ago I met him obviously through this process he was destined to provide me a
wealth of photos and videos that he had taken at heisman’s home and in later years that no one has ever been allowed to reproduce before notice that you can see from the amount of rust on the cell that David’s photo and the top left was taken quite some time later than the Jim Kirk photos in the bottom right before the woman in Ohio purchased it it sat in someone’s driveway in Palos Verde California around 72 or 73. we didn’t know these people well so we were wary of trespassing but as Junior High School bicycle guys and Star Trek Geeks we did anyway we visited the sad Hulk of the Galileo on several occasions to commune with it I was impressed as could be it even had the padlock and the lat screwed onto the front door so cool now life with Neo’s story would be echoed by many other people who contacted me who would find the Galileo and then leave being concerned that it was sitting on private
property literally in front of somebody’s house in their driveway but almost always they ended up coming back and taking the risk you know the saying no guts no glory now both of the pictures above were most likely taken in the summer of 1975. the condition of the Galileo matches what we saw in Michelle’s photos and the infamous brick hole is visible in the top photo now I’m pretty sure that the hole is actually behind Roger Heisman in the lower right hand photo but he is standing in front of it so we can’t see it the photo of Roger came from someone who Roger had given the Polaroid photo too now in this case the lower right photo appears to be taken before the one in the top left which was taken by David silver the boy in the lower photo is still unidentified to this point if you were this boy or you know this boy please reach out and contact me I would love to talk to them now when David silver visited Roger’s house in around 1977 he took a series of photographs
with the Galileo as well as some of Roger’s props the following series of photographs are all from his previously unavailable Private Collection this includes the photos that we we saw earlier of the Heisman props it is interesting to note here though that the phaser one portion of the phaser 2 prop is not actually in the hand grip at the Times these were taken now this photo that was taken shows the very earliest stages of the roof collapse that would be observed by so many people over the next decade or so no I’ve never heard anyone explain this before this is just something I’ve worked out in my own mind if you’re out there are carpenters or you’re really good at construction please let me know if I’m too far off base but one of the things that I noticed is over and over again over like a 40-year period one of the worst damage repeatedly experienced is the collapse of the rear roof now what I’ve noticed is it always occurs after someone has removed the panels that represented the
impulse engines the other thing is a lot of people may not realize this but the Galileo was wider in the back than it was in the front okay it was built that way to increase the optical illusion that it was bigger than it was they could shoot it from one of the rear corners and it just looked larger than it actually was now that meant that the span between the walls was larger in the back than it was in the front and I think it literally became the weakest point that finally would always be the first thing to go in the roof now another example of how quickly the Galileo began to fall apart is shown here the left is the photo that David took around 1977 whereas on the right is a photo taken by Michelle two years earlier in 1975. from this angle you can clearly see the lower exterior wood panels on the starboard side have literally fallen off the side of the shuttle by 1977. and a little digital
magic drives home this point here’s a better shot of a lower panel in this Same Day in 1977 David was and still is a professional photographer so he took photos that day with a polaroid as well as a 35 millimeter SLR same day different side from this angle we can see the same degradation in the rear roof that we commented on a few photos back this is a normal photo versus the slide photos that we’ve just looked at when comparing these photos to slide photos you can see that the resolution and color balance is far superior on the slide photos now Justice David was finishing up Roger did something that he didn’t do for a lot of people as a matter of fact I’m only aware that he’s ever done this for David and Michelle but I’m not going to be naive enough to think he didn’t do it for anybody else but I do know this it did not happen often he agreed to open the door so that David could get photos of the Interior now what follows next are photos like the rest of David silver stuff private never publicly available
and they became critical to me as I did my research on what people were telling me in their comments emails and phone calls ladies and gentlemen welcome to Restoration 101 you may remember that Michelle had also seen the inside of the Galileo about two years prior to these photos being taken and back then she said she had seen one of the original style seats Roger had told Michelle and David Gerald the intended to complete the inside of the Galileo to match what was shown on TV in the two years that follow these photos show that he had about five of the chairs at this point and they also built the rear wall and door to the rear compartment of the Galileo thus giving the Galileo two interior doors he also had strung up fluorescent lights in the ceiling and he had experimented with putting control panels on the inside bow wall as well it is extremely important to note here that neither the interior door nor the seats were with
the Galileo when he started at Rebel storage in the 1980s this means that no one could have known about the chairs or the rear wall and door unless they had actually been inside the Galileo in a heisman’s yard and he kept it padlocked at all times so if it sounds like I’m building a forensic profile I am because the next chapter in this story is truly remarkable so as they did with the Back to the Future movies this is to be continued no matter how you do it like the video subscribe to the channel bookmark the channel you do not want to miss what is coming in the next installments we have exclusive photos of a rare public appearance the Galileo before it’s 1986 appearance at the 20th anniversary in Anaheim we will tell you about a long forgotten outdoor storage lot that once held the Galileo and we’ll
introduce you to Racer X a man who may very well have owned a Galileo and the latter half of the 1970s please be sure to check out these other popular videos about season one and our series covering Star Trek in the 1960s and also please be sure to hit that like button below the video so that YouTube will recommend this video to other folks who have not yet discovered it however if there is only one video that you watch at all today on YouTube I recommend this one