Who designed the original USS Enterprise from the TV show "Star Trek"?

Walter 'Matt' Jefferies (1921 - 2003) was an American aviation and mechanical artist, set designer, and writer.

He is best known for his work on the original Star Trek television series, where he designed many of the sets and props, including the original Starship Enterprise, and the bridge and sick bay.

A story outlined in one of his sketches is that the Enterprise was Starfleet's 17th starship design and it was the first in the series, therefore the ship had the number "1701".

In many episodes of Star Trek and its subsequent spin off series, characters make reference to the Jeffries Tubes, basically service crawl-ways in engineering sections, which were named in honour of Matt Jeffries, however this actually started life as an in-joke and only became official in "The Hunted", a 3rd season episode of "Star Trek The Next Generation"

In June 2003, Jefferies was the guest of honour at the presentation of a documentary about him prepared for the special edition of the Star Trek Generations DVD. Jefferies died the following month in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure.