Chinese-American designer, sculptor, and artist well known for the props he created for the 1960s TV series Star Trek: The Original Series including the tricorder and communicator. Chang’s communicator design has been credited as an inspiration for modern flip-type cell/mobile phones.
With the encouragement of his adopted father, James Blanding Sloan, he began exhibiting his prints and watercolors at the age of seven to highly favorable reviews. Chang worked with Sloan on several theatre productions and in the 1940s, they briefly created their own studio to produce films.
For Star Trek, Chang also built costumes for the salt vampire (“The Man Trap”), the Gorn (“Arena”) and Balok’s false image (“The Corbomite Maneuver”). He created tribbles by using artificial fur stuffed with foam, the Neanderthals in “The Galileo Seven”, and the Romulan Bird of Prey (“Balance of Terror”), and the Vulcan harp first seen in “Charlie X” and later seen in “The Conscience of the King”, “Amok Time”, “The Way to Eden”; and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989).
His other film credits include sculpting the maquette of Pinocchio which was used as the reference for the animators of the classic 1940 Walt Disney feature, and articulated deer models for 1942 animated film Bambi. He designed the spectacular headdress worn by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 feature film Cleopatra. Other work included building the title object from 1960 movie The Time Machine which earned his company an Oscar.
In 1941, 31-year-old Wah Ming was diagnosed with polio after suffering flu-like symptoms. After an extended stay at a hospital in San Gabriel, California, and treatments that included confinement in an iron lung, he eventually would walk again.
Wah Chang married Glenella Taylor in 1941. He died on 22 December 2003 at age 86 in Carmel, California.
Link to Wikipedia biography