Yeah Enterprise had a lot of issues... I guess calling her Enterprise class would have been confusing but they wanted her the first ship instead of the USS Columbia though.

And of course the whole nutiness of doing a pre-sequel- you have Picard and Sisco talk about Kirk now and again but never Archer since of course Enterprise hadn't been written yet. The display of ships leading up to Kirk's Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture shows a couple of sailing ships, the shuttle, and a starship that looks nothing like the NX-01.  

I remember hearing the story about the AMT kit being used not too long after the series ended.

Here's a stone in the water.  Archer's Enterprise was know as a NX class vessel.  They had only two ships like it in the series but teh class had no name, just the testing designation but Archer called it a NX class after stopping a dispute with an alien ship.

Thanks RRA2, that I hadn't heard, interesting stuff there.

And good point there Steve, if the Enterprise were the first ship of the class wouldn't it be the Enterprise class? I'd go with the Constitution as NCC-1700 too.  

MJames is right about the Constellation, it was indeed an AMT model kit hacked up and fried with a soldering iron. In the reissued DVDs the studio has laid CGI over some of the bad FX work like this. Not a big fan of such stuff normally but unlike Lucas they're not changing stuff as much as just taking the old stuff and cleaning it up and making it look better. 

True, and according to the "Memory-Alpha" Wiki page, the U.S.S. Constitution was NCC-1700.  So, in essense, the Enterprise was number 2 in the line.  Although, Commodore Decker's U.S.S. Constellation (destroyed by the planet killer) was NCC-1017.

Go figure . . .

Mike

I do have one objection to the "1701" being seventeenth design, first ship, and that is that in the show they say that Enterprise is a Constitution-class cruiser. Wouldn't Constitution have been the first of that design?

Not that I'm challenging you, just Jeffries' explanation.

WOW this is what I absolutly love about these forums, from gearheads to rivet counters we all share information and so much more. Very cool back story on the Reg number for Entrprise. AWESOME

Just to muddy the waters a little see part of the article I found. Matt Jefferies was the art director for the original series.

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/06/15/8-starship-enterprise-facts-every-trekker-should-know/

The Origin of NCC-1701
How did the famous USS Enterprise get its registration number NCC-1701 is the stuff of legend. There are conflicting stories, including one where 1701 is a tribute to Roddenberry's childhood neighbor's house number or that Jefferies got it from the registration number of his airplane.
Here's Matt Jefferies' explanation when he was asked during a BBC Interview:
NC, by international agreement, stood for all United States commercial vehicles. Russia had wound up with four Cs, CC CC. It’d been pretty much a common opinion that any major effort in space would be two expensive for any one country, so I mixed the US and the Russian and came up with NCC.
The one seven zero part - I needed a number that would be instantly identifiable, and three, six, eight and nine are too easily confused. I don’t think anyone’ll confuse a one and a seven, or the zero. So the one seven stood for the seventeenth basic ship design in the Federation, and the zero one would have been serial number one, the first bird.

This got me curious and I started googling.

Here's a question for some of you pilots who were flying before I was:

One common 'answer' I found was that US civil aircraft of the time <of original star trek creation, we presume> started with "N", followed by "C" meaning "civil", and somebody added the extra C because it looked cool.

I started flying in '72 and I sure don't remember any tail numbers beginning with "NC", or anything about that "C". Input?

Yup Steve has the most accepted explanation. I've heard Navigational Contact Code too but Naval Construction Contract seems to be prefered by more fans and sites.

I believe it goes back to Roddenberry's private plane... it had NCC and a number. Don't remember if it was 1701 or not.

Ahh now it make sense, thank you Sailor Steve.

Enterprise was also USS, for United Space Ship.

According to the Wiki article Matt Jeffries made it up to look sort of like the original US Navy designation codes. Thanks to The Making of Star Trek and some other sources it is commonly accepted to mean "Naval Construction Contract."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Enterprise