From 1959 to 1965, I became aware of a "teleportation craze" that may have started with the 1958 movie, "The Fly", starring Vincent Price. From comic books, magazines, advertising commercials, TV shows and movies; teleportation seem to be mentioned in ways both subtle and overt.

By the time Star Trek came along in 1966, the teleportation craze had faded, so I was surprised to see a transporter/teleporter as a fixture on a spaceship, sorta like retro-future in the 1960's.

In 1964, the science fiction series, "The Outer Limits", told a story about a six-block section of an ordinary neighborhood on Earth that was teleported to the planet Luminos. If the humans of the stolen neighborhood made effective slaves, then the entire population of Earth would become slaves of the Luminoids. 

Here is the whole episode, let me know if the embed works.

Here I thought Edd had discovered the means to teleport. Imagine my disappointment.

The only aspect of Star Trek's Transporter that's unique - no actual apparatus is needed at the destination.

You step on the "transmitter" pad at the point of origin, but there's no "receiver" pad needed at the point of destination. Other movies and TV shows transport from pad to pad, or chamber to chamber.

John Weldon's "To Be", the 1990 animated short from the National Film Board of Canada, is still a point of reference for me when deciding if teleportation is just a murder machine in disguise.