Editing Stargate (device) (section)

===Films===
[[Image:Buried gate.jpg|thumb|A Stargate being excavated]]
The [[Stargate (film)|''Stargate'']] film begins in 1928, when the alien device is first discovered and unearthed at [[Giza]], with a young [[Catherine Langford]] watching as her father Paul, the archaeologist who found it, directs its unearthing. ''Stargate SG-1'' has since revealed more of the backstory of the Earth Stargate. The American ship ''Achilles'' brought the gate to America in 1939 to prevent it from falling into the hands of the [[Nazis]].<ref>''[[Stargate: Continuum]]''</ref> The [[United States Air Force]] then stored the device in various locations —including Washington, DC<ref name="Nineteensixtynine">{{cite episode|title=1969|episode-link=1969 (Stargate SG-1)|series=Stargate SG-1|series-link=Stargate SG-1}}</ref>—before installing it at its location of the film and series. The Stargate was studied in the 1940s as a potential weapon and was later mothballed.{{r|TANTALUS}} As the ''Stargate'' film quickly skips to the "present day" (1994), unsuccessful archaeologist [[Daniel Jackson (Stargate)|Daniel Jackson]] is giving a lecture about his [[Ancient_astronauts#Pyramids_of_Egypt|outlandish theories]] that the [[pharaoh]] [[Khufu]] did not build the [[Great Pyramid of Giza]]. After he is laughed away, an aged Catherine Langford meets with him and recruits his [[egyptology|egyptological]] talent, taking him to a top-secret military base at [[Cheyenne Mountain Complex|Cheyenne Mountain]], where he is instructed to decipher the unique [[Egyptian hieroglyph]]s present on a set of cover-stones. He realizes that the indecipherable glyphs are not actually words but images of [[constellation]]s, such that by identifying 6 of them a position in space can be extrapolated. He is then shown the stargate itself, uses his new understanding to identify the 7th symbol (the point of origin allowing a route to be extrapolated), and the gate is opened for the <!--NOTE-->first<!--Please leave this as "first", ignoring the 1945 opening revealed in "The Torment of Tantalus", for the sake of brevity - this section is only a short synopsis, and the 1945 revelation is mentioned in many places elsewhere.--> time.

Because thousands of combinations had been previously tried and had failed, it was believed at the time that only two stargates existed, connecting Earth and the planet [[Abydos (Stargate)|Abydos]], which was visited in the film and was at the time erroneously believed to be located in the Kaliam Galaxy, billions of light years away on the other side of the known universe. At the beginning of the ''Stargate SG-1'' series, however, a large set of additional valid coordinates were discovered engraved in ruins on Abydos. Because of the [[stellar drift]] accumulated over millions of years, other addresses were impossible to dial until [[Samantha Carter]] reworked the dialing system on Earth to account for this movement. After this, a massive network of possible connections suddenly became available. Even more addresses were later uncovered by Colonel Jack O'Neill from a repository of Ancient knowledge. In order to allow for dialing back to Earth from other locations (without altering the dialing system), it was later stated that the DHD ("Dial-Home Device") normally attached to each stargate automatically updates for stellar drift; Earth's stargate lacks its DHD, requiring other accommodation.

The alien race encountered in the original movie is later developed in ''SG-1'' as the [[Goa'uld]], the dominant evil power in the Milky Way. The leaders of this race, the [[System Lord]]s, pose as gods and use the stargates to transport slaves between worlds. This has resulted in a large number of planets throughout the galaxy supporting human life, often in civilizations more primitive than Earth. The majority of these civilizations, descended from former Goa'uld slaves, treat the Stargate as a religious relic, often as a source of long-forgotten fear and evil.

[[Direct-to-video]] films ''[[Stargate: The Ark of Truth]]'' (2008) and ''[[Stargate: Continuum]]'' (also 2008) expand upon the ''Stargate'' lore.