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Terminator Glossary |
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Help define the Sarah Connor Chronicles and Terminator movie Terminator-ology!
Add and define sophisticated Terminator techie terms to the list below and create a reference for all!
ALSO, ADD YOUR OWN CREATED WORDS TO THE SUPERFAN "TERMINATOR-OLOGY" LIST!
ALSO, ADD YOUR OWN CREATED WORDS TO THE SUPERFAN "TERMINATOR-OLOGY" LIST!
(Select EasyEdit then right-click on the table to add a new row...let's try to keep it alphabetical! If a term requires it's own page, select Add Page and define away!)
| TERM | ILLUSTRATION | DEFINITION |
| Artificial Intelligence |  | Artificial intelligence (AI) is both the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it.Major AI textbooks define artificial intelligence as "the study and design of intelligent agents," where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success. AI can be seen as a realization of an abstract intelligent agent (AIA) which exhibits the functional essence of intelligence. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines." AI is explored in depth in the following movies: "A.I." by Stephen Spielberg, and "I, Robot" based on the book by Isaac Asimov. |
| Bar Code |  | General Definiton: A barcode (also bar code) is a machine-readable representation of information (usually dark ink on a light background to create high and low reflectance which is converted to 1s and 0s). Originally, barcodes stored data in the widths and spacing’s of printed parallel lines, but today they also come in patterns of dots, concentric circles, and text codes hidden within images. Barcodes can be read by optical scanners called barcode readers or scanned from an image by special software. Barcodes are widely used to implement Auto ID Data Capture (AIDC) systems that improve the speed and accuracy of computer data entry. An advantage over other methods of AIDC is that it is less expensive to implement.Specific to Terminator Franchise: Laser barcodes are identification numbers burned onto Skynet Work Camp prisoners by laser scan, presumably to keep track of them. According to the Terminator 2 shooting script, these barcodes are ten-digit numbers with a pattern of lines below it, like a traditional product barcode. |
| Coltan |  | Coltan is the colloquial African name for columbite-tantalite, a metallic ore used to produce the elements niobium and tantalum. The endoskeleton of advanced terminator machines are made using alloys derived from Coltan to make them hardened to heat. T-600s were made of a titanium alloy endoskeleton, but were vulnerable to heat. Coltan alloys have a much higher melting point, making it a superior alloy for endoskeletons |
| CPU |  | The Neural Net CPU is a "learning computer" originally developed by Miles Bennett Dyson, director of Special Projects at Cyberdyne Systems Corporation, in 1994. It is one of the most powerful microprocessors ever built. All of the battle units employed by Skynet contain a Neural Net CPU.Working on the top secret project at Cyberdyne Systems, Dyson dedicated his life to the development and production of the Central Processing Unit (CPU), sometimes to the detriment of his family life. Surrounded by like minded scientist, and working in Cyberdyne's expansive labs, Dyson had the run of the best design and testing facilities available. Creating a strong "community" bond and relaxed working environment, Dyson was soon able to increase productivity and earn the respect of his fellow researchers. After many long years of work, Dyson eventually hit upon a prototype model that was not only worked and was bug free, but was superconductive at room temperature, making it extremely powerful. It marked the beginning of the end. The lattice of cubes in the construction of the prototype CPU suggests a "hypercube" (a cube of more than three dimensions). In computer design, hypercubes are used as a physical connection scheme that minimizes the effective communication distance (and therefore the time delay) between processors, when the logical connection scheme needed by the software that will be run on those processors cannot be known in advance. This then supports the Neural Nets ability to learn, adapt, and built new logical connection schemes. |
| Cyberdyne |  | Cyberdyne is initially a benign manufacturing corporation in Sunnyvale, California. Its products are unknown, but from the equipment in its factory and its high tech-sounding name, it seems possible that Cyberdyne might have been some sort of smaller, parts producer for larger manufactures of high tech equipment. After a T-800 series Terminator, Cyberdyne Systems Model 101— a cyborg from the future, designed to kill humans — is crushed in one of the company's hydraulic presses, the company secretly begins manufacturing technological devices based on reverse engineering the Terminator's remains. Cyberdyne reverse engineers the recovered CPU from the destroyed cyborg and creates a powerful new microprocessor for weapons systems, becoming a major contractor for the US military. |
| Cyborg |  | A cyborg is a cybernetic organism (i.e., an organism that is a self-regulating integration of artificial and natural systems). The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. The cyborg is often seen today merely as an organism that has enhanced abilities due to technology, but this perhaps oversimplifies the category of feedback.The Borg (pictured) are the best examples of a a Cyborg. They are a fictional pseudo-race of cyborgs depicted in Star Trek. The Borg appear in many elements of the Trek franchise, playing major roles in The Next Generation and Voyager TV series, notably as an invasion threat to the Federation, and the means of return of the stranded Federation starship Voyager. The Borg have become a symbol in popular culture for any juggernaut against whom "resistance is futile." |
| Endoskeleton |  | The endoskeleton is the internal support structure of an animal, human, or cyborg. Skynet's most popular endoskeleton cyborg was its Series 800 terminator, which used a metallic endoskeleton covered with living tissue. For years Skynet tried to imitate the human body in structure, functionality and looks on its robots so that it could build a perfect Infiltrator. The 800 Series was a breakthrough in developing terminators that were similar to humans. |
| Grandfather Paradox |  | The grandfather paradox is a paradox of time travel, first described by the science fiction writer René Barjavel in his 1943 book "Le Voyageur Imprudent" ("The Imprudent Traveller"). The paradox is this: suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveller's grandmother. As a result, one of the traveller's parents (and by extension, the traveller himself) would never have been conceived. This would imply that he could not have travelled back in time after all, which in turn implies the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveller would have been conceived, allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather. Thus each possibility seems to imply its own negation, a type of logical paradox.An equivalent paradox is known (in philosophy) as autoinfanticide — that is, going back in time and killing oneself as a baby — though when the word was first coined in a paper by Paul Horwich it was in the version autofanticide. The grandfather paradox has been used to argue that backwards time travel must be impossible. However, a number of possible ways of avoiding the paradox have been proposed, such as the idea that the timeline is fixed and unchangeable, or the idea that the time traveler will end up in a parallel timeline, while the timeline in which the traveler was born continues to exist. |
| I-950 |  | Unlike the T series Terminators, the I series are not factory built machines. Skynet decided that the best way for one of its terminators to act human was to start out with a human and add technological enhancements where necessary. The I-950 starts out as a baby with a neural net processor attached to its brain, providing an uplink to Skynet. To condition it physically, it is coaxed with holographic toys to crawl until it is exhausted. After four years, it is given an injection that rapidly ages it to maturity to finish its training. In an effort to blend in better with humans, the I-950 is allowed to feel emotions, but the range is limited by one of its cybernetic implants. Because it is far more human than machine, dogs are not alerted to its presence, and the infiltrator can go undetected for extremely long periods of time inside a resistance base.SOURCE: T2: Infiltrator (2001) is the first official continuation novel of the Terminator franchise, written by S. M. Stirling. It is followed by T2: Rising Storm (2003), and T2: Future War (2004). |
| Infiltrator |  | Skynet developed Infiltrator terminators to mimic humans and infiltrate the human Resistance. The T-800 was the first truly successful Infiltrator unit, consisting of living tissue over a metal endoskeleton despite that the T-720 had living tissue too [citation needed]. Earlier attempts at Infiltrator units include the T-600, which used rubber skin over a metal endoskeleton. Later Infiltrator units were based on mimetic poly-alloy technology: T-1000: The mimetic poly-alloy construction of the T-1000 allowed it to replicate any object or person of similar volume that it molecularly sampled by physical contact. T-X: The T-X Series used a liquid metal outer sheath of mimetic poly-alloy to cover a metal endoskeleton. Additional research was put forward into increasingly organic terminators able to more efficiently evade detection and infiltrate human organizations. TS-300: The TS-300 is a stealth Infiltrator that uses ceramic endoskeletons and personality transfer software to create undetectable one-off copies of real human beings. |
| Judgement Day |  | The fictional day when Skynet becomes active and begins to destroy humanity with nuclear missiles all over the globe. |
| Metal | A Resistance fighter Slang term referring to a Terminator. | |
| Model 101 |  | The Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 is referring to "the mould around the metal endoskeleton (the skin), and in this case, 101 refers to mould number 101" James Cameron states that "...the model 101s all look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, with a 102 looking like someone else...". It is also sometimes called CSM-101 or simply Model-101. |
| Neural Network |  | An artificial neural network (ANN), often just called a "neural network" (NN), is a mathematical model or computational model based on biological neural networks. It consists of an interconnected group of artificial neurons and processes information using a connectionist approach to computation. In most cases an ANN is an adaptive system that changes its structure based on external or internal information that flows through the network during the learning phase. In more practical terms neural networks are non-linear statistical data modeling tools. They can be used to model complex relationships between inputs and outputs or to find patterns in data. In robotics the approach of neural networks is called the "bottom-up approach." In today's modern robots, 100 artifical neurons is exceptional. However a human for example has over 100 billion neurons. |
| Predestination Paradox | A predestination paradox, also called either a causal loop, or a causality loop and (less frequently) either a closed loop or closed time loop, is a paradox of time travel that is often used as a convention in science fiction. It exists when a time traveller is caught in a loop of events that "predestines" him or her to travel back in time. Because of the possibility of influencing the past while time travelling, one way of explaining why history does not change is by saying that whatever has happened was meant to happen. A time traveller attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be fulfilling his role in creating history as we know it, not changing it. A typical example of a predestination paradox (used in The Twilight Zone episode "No Time Like the Past") is as follows: A man travels back in time to discover the cause of a famous fire. While in the building where the fire started, he accidentally knocks over a kerosene lantern and causes a fire, the same fire that would inspire him, years later, to travel back in time. The predestination paradox is in some ways the opposite of the grandfather paradox, the famous example of the traveller killing his own grandfather before his parent is conceived, thereby precluding his own travel to the past by canceling his own existence. In physics, the Novikov self-consistency principle proposes that contradictory causal loops cannot form, but that consistent ones can. In a physical sense, a self-consistent causal loop of this kind is not actually a paradox because it produces a logically consistent result rather than a contradictory one. It is only perceived as a paradox because it goes against conventional expectations and assumptions about causality. | |
| Resistance | A war/refugee organization run by John Connor after Judgement Day in attempt to stop Skynet. | |
| Self-aware |  | Self-awareness is the explicit understanding that one exists. Furthermore, it includes the concept that one exists as an individual, separate from other people, with private thoughts. It may also include the understanding that other people are similarly self-aware.In Terminator 2, Sarah Connor is able to stop the development of SkyNet by destroying the remains of the first Terminator as well as the Cyberdyne building. This should have rendered the future unwritten, but in 2003 a third Terminator, the T-X, was sent to kill important leaders in Connor's army. Judgment Day had merely been postponed and now took place in 2003 as opposed to 1997. This alternation to the timeline may have drastically changed the future outcome of the war; for all we know, Connor's forces may not have shut down SkyNet in 2029. As well, it remains unrevealed how much of future history SkyNet itself knows. Did the sending of the lone Terminator back to 1984 cause changes to manifest in 2029 which resulted in the T-1000 to be sent back to 1994 which then in turn further changed the timeline so SkyNet would send the T-X back to 2003? |
| Sentience |  | Sentience refers to the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness. The possession of sapience is not a necessity. The word sentient is often confused with the word sapient, which can connote knowledge, consciousness, or apperception. The root of the confusion is that the word conscious has a number of different usages in English. The two words can be distinguished by looking at their Latin roots: sentire, "to feel"; and sapere, "to know". |
| Skynet |  | An artificially intelligent defense network super-computer built by Cyberdyne Systems Corporation under contract for the United States military, designed to control the nation's most critical defense-related assets.Skynet is a fictional example of an artificial intelligence that becomes sentient, and turns on its creators. Skynet has yet to appear on screen in the film series, but has appeared in spin-off media, particularly in video games and in the theme park attraction T2 3-D: Battle Across Time. Skynet is also involved in a complex time travel grandfather paradox, responsible for its own creation as well as alternate future timelines. |
| T-1 | | The T-1 is series of fictional robots in the film Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. It is an autonomous military robot. In a deleted scene, its full name is given as the "T-1 Battlefield Robot."The T-1 is portrayed by three full-scale remote controlled robots, the only difference from its movie counterpart being that it is not artificially intelligent or armed with weapons. Its design is loosely anthropomorphic, a "head" with sensors for eyes, gatling guns for arms, a "torso" that swivels like a human one, and caterpillar tracks for legs. While it is quite large, it is small enough to get around typical office building corridors. The T-1s are given the designations of "T1-n", with n being a sequential number for each one. |
| T-70 |  | The demonstration featured as the premise for T2 3-D involves several large practical effects robots called T-70s, designed as mechanical soldiers, with large miniguns on their arms. They are the earliest terminator models shown to have a humanoid form with arms and legs. In an interview for Starlog Magazine, one of the ride's producers stated that originally, the T-800 endoskeletons from the Terminator films were going to be the machines being demonstrated. However, James Cameron pointed out to them that it was chronologically impossible for the T-800 Terminators to be present in a modern day because the T-800s were made by Skynet during the future war. As a result, the producers of the attraction agreed with Cameron and allowed him to design an early model Terminator for the attraction |
| T-600 |  | The Series 600, or T-600, is an Infiltrator terminator mass produced by Skynet. T-600's had titanium alloy endoskeletons covered in rubber skin. Resistance fighters could easily spot T-600's, so Skynet made the Series 800 with living tissue over its metal endoskeleton. While knowledge from past time-travel has advanced the rate of terminator development, an Infiltrator terminator with what appears to be rubber skin also exists in Cameron Philips's future. This has been confirmed as the first on screen sighting of a T-600 |
| T-850 |  | The Terminator sent back through time by Kate Brewster in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is seemingly identical to the two T-800s sent back in earlier installments of the franchise, except the differences are not apparent. The differences between the T-800 and the T-850, is that T-850 has flaps of skin allowing for easier access to endoskeletion for repair purposes. The power source is also a different, because the T-850 has two hydrogen fuel cells, that when seriously damaged, detonate in back-pack nuke fashion.This Terminator was destroyed when it removed its power cell and set it to overload in the mouth of the T-X, thus destroying both machines. |
| T-1000 |   | The T-1000 is a fictional android assassin featured as the main antagonist in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The T-1000 is portrayed by Robert Patrick. However, being a shape-shifter, the T-1000 is played by other actors in some scenes of the film. Teaser trailers for Terminator 2 deliberately withheld the notion that the T-1000 character was the villain. A tagline for the film was "This time there are two. Terminator 2."In Terminator 2, the T-1000 is presented as a technological leap over the "Model 101" Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Schwarzenegger's character explains how the T-1000 is a more advanced terminator. It can absorb damage better, and physically mimic specific humans and other objects. Furthermore, it can use its advanced composition in innovative and surprising ways, including fitting through narrow openings, walking through prison bars, and flattening itself on the ground to hide. |
| T-1000000 |  | T2 3-D: Battle Across Time features the T-1000000 (or T- Meg.), a gigantic spider-like version of the T-1000 seen in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It defends Skynet's CPU from attack. Like the T-1000, it is made of mimetic polyalloy, allowing it to form its legs into stabbing weapons. The only known T-1000000 was destroyed when Skynet's core was destroyed.In the producer interview from Starlog Magazine, it was originally planned to have the T-Meg be composed of a large group of T-1000s forming themselves together. |
| T-X |  | The T-X is a model of Terminator produced by Skynet in the future. One model of this unit was dispatched by the Machines into the past in order to terminate John Connor. The T-X ultimately failed in its attempts to destroy the Tech-Com resistance leader. With the success of the mimetic poly-alloy T-1000 Series, Skynet continued to develop its liquid metal technology, this time combining it with an advanced endoskeleton, similar in shape and structure to that of the Series 900. The resultant T-X Series is stronger, faster, more intelligent, and more deadly than any of Skynet's other battle units, effectively making them redundant. Due to the T-X's default form being that of a young female, John Connor dubs the T-X the "Terminatrix". |
| Tech-Com |  | Tech-Com is a fictional organization of human survivors of Judgment Day in the Terminator series, who are dedicated to defending other human survivors and fight and defeat Skynet. Known members:
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| Terminator |  | A fictitious cybernetic organism featured in the James Cameron Terminator film series created by an artificially intelligent computer, Skynet, to wipe out humanity. |
| Thermite Grenade |  | Thermite hand grenades are used as incendiary devices to quickly destroy enemy equipment. Thermite TH3 is a mixture of other ingredients to enhance its incendiary effects and reduces the ignition temperature, it will also weld metal surfaces together |
| Time Travel |  | Time travel is the concept of moving between different moments in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, either sending objects (or in some cases just information) backwards in time to a moment before the present, or sending objects forward from the present to the future without the need to experience the intervening period (at least not at the normal rate). Some interpretations of time travel also suggest that travel backwards in time might take one to a parallel universe whose history could begin to diverge from the traveler's original history after the moment the traveler arrived in the past.Although time travel has been a common plot device in fiction since the 19th century, and one-way travel into the future is arguably possible given the phenomenon of time dilation based on velocity in the theory of special relativity (exemplified by the twin paradox) as well as gravitational time dilation in the theory of general relativity, it is currently unknown whether the laws of physics would allow backwards time travel. Any technological device, whether fictional or hypothetical, that is used to achieve two-way time travel is known as a time machine. |
| Tin-Man Tin-Men Tin-Miss | Singular name for fans of Sarah Connor Chronicles Plural name for fans of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles Singular name for female fan of Sarah Connor Chronicles | |
| Wormhole |   | A Wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is basically a 'shortcut' through space and time. A wormhole has at least two mouths which are connected to a single throat or tube. If the wormhole is traversable, matter can 'travel' from one mouth to the other by passing through the throat. While there is no observational evidence for wormholes, spacetimes containing wormholes are known to be valid solutions in general relativity.Wormholes are also permitted by the Einstein field equations of general relativity, although it would be impossible to travel through a wormhole unless it was what is known as a "traversable wormhole". A proposed time-travel machine using a traversable wormhole would (hypothetically) work in the following way: One end of the wormhole is accelerated to some significant fraction of the speed of light, perhaps with some advanced propulsion system, and then brought back to the point of origin. Alternatively, another way is to take one entrance of the wormhole and move it to within the gravitational field of an object that has higher gravity than the other entrance, and then return it to a position near the other entrance. For both of these methods, time dilation causes the end of the wormhole that has been moved to have aged less than the stationary end, as seen by an external observer; however, time connects differently through the wormhole than outside it, so that synchronized clocks at either end of the wormhole will always remain synchronized as seen by an observer passing through the wormhole, no matter how the two ends move around.[19] This means that an observer entering the accelerated end would exit the stationary end when the stationary end was the same age that the accelerated end had been at the moment before entry; for example, if prior to entering the wormhole the observer noted that a clock at the accelerated end read a date of 2007 while a clock at the stationary end read 2012, then the observer would exit the stationary end when its clock also read 2007, a trip backwards in time as seen by other observers outside. One significant limitation of such a time machine is that it is only possible to go as far back in time as the initial creation of the machine;in essence, it is more of a path through time than it is a device that itself moves through time, and it would not allow the technology itself to be moved backwards in time. This could provide an alternative explanation for Hawking's observation: a time machine will be built someday, but has not yet been built, so the tourists from the future cannot reach this far back in time. |
