During the early seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise, the transporter was considered to be an experimental technology. It was only used in emergency situations, and most missions used shuttlepods instead. By the fourth season, transporters had been improved to the point where they were used more frequently. And in "Daedalus" in Star Trek: Enterprise, we met scientific genius Emory Erickson, the inventor of the transporter, who supervised a major upgrade of the Enterprise's equipment, which included an all-new, bigger console.