Zefram Cochrane invented Warp Drive. Good God, he's a genius!
The Phoenix was his ship! Lily Sloane was his assistant! Zephram Cochran was his actual name! He rules!

He never expected to save mankind, become a hero, or be instrumental in the founding of a new civilization. He simply wanted to retire in peace (On an island full of naked females, preferably).

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An interesting Biography of him appears in the Star Trek novel Federation. Where Zephram Cochrane appears in the dawn of World War III, Star Trek, and in Star Trek: the Next Generation.

The book suggests that Cochrane's Super Impellor Engine is the catalyst of WWIII, and launches Colonel Greene and Adrick Thorsen to power on Earth.

In the original series episode Metamorphosis (TOS), the shuttle Galileo is forced to land on Gamma Canaris N, where the crew meets Zefram Cochrane. Cochrane, played by Glenn Corbett of Route 66 fame, is a genuine future celebrity, a native of Alpha Centauri and inventor of the warp drive. At age 87, Cochrane disappeared in a ship, claiming he wanted to die in outer space, but here he was, one hundred and fifty years later, in perfect health and decades younger. His life and youth have been sustained by The Companion, the alien "cloud creature" that forced the shuttle to land. The Companion is madly in love with Cochrane, so when one of the shuttle’s passengers, Assistant Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford, dies, the Companion enters her body. The happy couple lives out a normal human lifespan on the planet.

In the film Star Trek: First Contact, the USS Enterprise travels centuries back in time and the crew meets Zefram Cochrane. Here he is a native of Earth played by James Cromwell, who looks nothing like Corbett. Cochrane is a drunk who must be "encouraged" to take his warp powered ship for a spin. Much to his distaste, the Enterprise crew fawns over Cochrane, who is a legend to them. I wonder if anyone bothered to tell him that he’d be mating with an alien cloud creature a couple of centuries later.

On Star Trek: The Next Generation, the term "millicochranes" is used to measure subspace distortion.

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