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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And

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Speaker 1: this episode is to publish on the fourth of July

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Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen. And here in the United States that

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Speaker 1: date is treated with some reverence, as we consider it

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Speaker 1: Independence Day. And back in seventeen seventy six, the Continental

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Speaker 1: Congress representing the thirteen colonies of the America's declared those

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Speaker 1: colonies a new nation called the United States of America.

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Speaker 1: But that actually happened on July two, seventeen seventy six.

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Speaker 1: John Adams was convinced that that was going to be

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Speaker 1: the day we all celebrated. As it turned out, we

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Speaker 1: decided to do it on July four, because that was

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Speaker 1: the day the Declaration of Independence, that famous document outlining

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Speaker 1: America's are uments for seceding from the British Empire was

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Speaker 1: dated is dated on July fourth, seventeen seventy six. Also, um,

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Speaker 1: despite what popular musical numbers would have you believe, it's

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Speaker 1: mostly likely that that most of the representatives did not

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Speaker 1: sign the Declaration of Independence that day. They probably did

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Speaker 1: it on August second, seventeen seventy six. But never mind

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Speaker 1: all that. The fourth of July is when the US

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Speaker 1: celebrates Independence Day. Whenever it happened doesn't matter. It just

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Speaker 1: matters when we celebrate it. And in the past on

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Speaker 1: tech stuff, I've tried to time vaguely related topics to

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Speaker 1: that date. Whenever we've published on or around the fourth

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Speaker 1: of July, we've talked about the tech of say Independence Day,

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Speaker 1: the movie, or like Fireworks. And today I want to

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Speaker 1: talk about a Disneyland attraction called Great Moments with Mr

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Speaker 1: Lincoln because I feel that's sort of quintessentially American, even

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Speaker 1: though Lincoln was our sixteenth president and governed in the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century, not the teenth century, but never mind America, right,

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Speaker 1: And you know, they're talking about Disneyland, something that is

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Speaker 1: truly a piece of Americana, and Great Moments with Mr

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Speaker 1: Lincoln is located on Main Street, USA. That was Walt

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Speaker 1: Disney's monument to the classic Americana. It's a small town,

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Speaker 1: almost like an America that never was an idealized America.

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Speaker 1: So I figured it was a good topic to cover

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Speaker 1: in this episode. Now, I have done an episode about

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Speaker 1: audio animatronics in the past, and I'm going to be

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Speaker 1: covering some of that ground again here. But we're specifically

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Speaker 1: looking at the development of the Mr. Lincoln attraction in

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Speaker 1: this episode, so I'm not going to focus too much

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Speaker 1: on the other stuff. I'll have some stuff to say

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Speaker 1: about some of the predecessors because that's important to understand

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Speaker 1: in order to figure out how Mr Lincoln worked. So

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Speaker 1: if you're unfamiliar with the attraction great Moments with Mr Lincoln,

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Speaker 1: here's kind of how it goes. You would go into

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Speaker 1: a building is the Grand Opera House on Main Street,

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Speaker 1: USA and Disneyland, and you would see a little pre

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Speaker 1: show piece before going into a theater, and you'd sit down.

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Speaker 1: You get another little film, and then a screen would

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Speaker 1: lift up and you would see, seated center stage, the

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Speaker 1: audio animatronic figure of Abraham Lincoln. And then Abraham Lincoln

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Speaker 1: stands up out of his chair and speaks to the crowd.

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Speaker 1: And the content and the technology of the attraction have

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Speaker 1: changed several times throughout the years. In fact, these days

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't call it audio animatronics at all. It's the

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Speaker 1: only reason anyone would refer to it that way is

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Speaker 1: just because that's what the technology had been called for

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Speaker 1: years and years and years. But the current incarnation at

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Speaker 1: Disneyland isn't really audio animatronic. It's not working on that

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Speaker 1: same system. Now, before I talk about how it works,

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Speaker 1: let's go into the history of audio animatronics and the

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Speaker 1: development of this attraction in particular, because I think it's

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Speaker 1: pretty fascinating to learn abou not just the technology side,

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Speaker 1: but the business side of this. So first we got

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Speaker 1: to go back to nineteen That's when Walt Disney took

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Speaker 1: his family on a vacation in Europe, and on that trip,

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Speaker 1: Disney got enamored with some clockwork mechanical toys, including a

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Speaker 1: mechanical little bird. You would wind it up and it

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Speaker 1: with tweet and flap its wings and it would move

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Speaker 1: in a pretty convincing way. And he was inspired by

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Speaker 1: that to take these toys back to his his folks

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Speaker 1: over at Walt Disney Studios and say, you know, we've

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Speaker 1: we've animated stuff on film. We've taken cells and we've

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Speaker 1: drawn pictures on them, and we've taken photographs of that

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Speaker 1: and turned it into a film where it looks like

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Speaker 1: the inanimate is moving around What if we did something similar,

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Speaker 1: but we did it in the real world, we brought

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Speaker 1: it into the three dimensions around us, and make make

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Speaker 1: this idea sort of a grander scale. We're gonna take

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Speaker 1: these little mechanical elements that I've seen here and make

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Speaker 1: it something much bigger. So you were turned to California.

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Speaker 1: He brought ideas to his team of developers that we

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Speaker 1: now today would call imagineers. That's a portmanteau of imagination

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Speaker 1: and engineer, and he said, what if we were to

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Speaker 1: make something like this but bigger? So in nineteen fifty one,

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Speaker 1: he gave an assignment to two of his employees, Roger

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Speaker 1: Braggy and Wattle rogers Uh. Roger Braggy was born in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o eight in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and he attended a

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Speaker 1: vocational school and trained in machine shop work. He would

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Speaker 1: relocate to Los Angeles and he found a lot of

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Speaker 1: work in the film industry. He even developed technologies like

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Speaker 1: a rear projection system for major movie studios, and in

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine he got an invitation to join the

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Speaker 1: Walt Disney Studio as a precision machinist. One of his

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Speaker 1: first jobs he had was to install the multiplane animation

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Speaker 1: camera in the studio's brand new Burbank location. Now, this

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Speaker 1: was a camera that consisted of not just a film camera,

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Speaker 1: but also a massive frame, and that frame could hold

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Speaker 1: multiple layers or planes of an animated cell. So you

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Speaker 1: might have a foreground image, you might have a main image,

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Speaker 1: you might have a couple of background images, and they

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Speaker 1: would all be held at different heights relative to this

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Speaker 1: camera lens. And then by moving the frames either closer

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Speaker 1: to or further away from the camera, you can make

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Speaker 1: elements within that animated scene appear to move at different

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Speaker 1: speeds and give this illusion of depth. So it's almost

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Speaker 1: like you're zooming in through an animated scene. And that

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Speaker 1: was something that was really really innovative. Well, also, I

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Speaker 1: should mention that Disney did not necessarily invent that one

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Speaker 1: of his former employees more or less invented this approach

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Speaker 1: of eye works, but that's a different story. Disney made

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Speaker 1: extensive use of that technology when his studio made snow

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Speaker 1: White in the Seven Dwarfs. By nine, Broggy had been

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Speaker 1: promoted to the head of the studio Machine Shot and

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Speaker 1: when all started thinking about building a theme park, Braggy

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Speaker 1: was one of his go to engineers for attractions. Rogers meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: was born in nineteen nineteen in Stratton, Colorado, and he

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Speaker 1: studied art at an institute in Los Angeles. He became

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Speaker 1: proficient in lots of different areas of art, including sculpting,

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Speaker 1: so he joined the Walt Disney Studio also in nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty nine along with Braggy, and early on he worked

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Speaker 1: primarily as an animator on films like Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella,

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Speaker 1: and Peter Pan. He also created props and managers for

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Speaker 1: the studio's live action films, and like Braggy, he would

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Speaker 1: be invited by Disney to work on attractions for the

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Speaker 1: upcoming Disneyland theme park. So Walt Disney comes up to

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Speaker 1: these two guys and he says, I want you to

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Speaker 1: build me a figure approximately nine inches tall of a

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Speaker 1: man that can move around like a human can, so

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Speaker 1: sort of like a puppet, but not puppeteered by any

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Speaker 1: person in real time. It would be an entire mechanical

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Speaker 1: system that would be able to do this, and it

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Speaker 1: was called Project Little Man. So as to build a

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Speaker 1: nine inch human figure that could move and and move

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Speaker 1: its mouth as if it's talking and be able to

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Speaker 1: synchronize that with an actual voice track, and essentially he

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Speaker 1: just wanted to bring that concept of animation into the

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Speaker 1: real world. Buddy Ebsen, the actor who would become Jed

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Speaker 1: Clampett and the Beverly Hillbillies, would come into the studio

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Speaker 1: and he did this whole song and dance routine in

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Speaker 1: front of a screen that was just a bunch of

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Speaker 1: grid lines, so that the animators had a reference they

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Speaker 1: could work from. And Buddy would later say of Disney, quote,

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Speaker 1: he took me to a room where there were these

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Speaker 1: seven little guys with aprons and thick glasses working on

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Speaker 1: a contrivance that pulled wires, and a little mechanical man

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Speaker 1: that moved his arms, legs, head, and mouth end quote.

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Speaker 1: So the two engineers lead this team. They used cables

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Speaker 1: and cams and hinged limbs to create sort of a

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Speaker 1: rudimentary must soul in skeletal system for this little figure,

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Speaker 1: and the machinery would end up being underneath this little

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Speaker 1: figure's stage. So the whole thing was actually quite large.

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Speaker 1: The figure was only nine inches tall, but the whole

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Speaker 1: system was really big, and it wasn't really that dissimilar

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Speaker 1: to a puppet, except again, the puppeteer was mechanical, not

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Speaker 1: a human, and it was it was. It kind of worked,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't practical. Later, when it came time to

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Speaker 1: look into making audio animatronics for theme park attractions, Broggy

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Speaker 1: would actually go to All Disney and say that we

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Speaker 1: should really create larger life sized figures. It would actually

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Speaker 1: make it easier because you could fit a lot of

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Speaker 1: the elements inside the figure itself instead of having to

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Speaker 1: find places in the environment to hide all the mechanisms

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Speaker 1: that would make the figure move. So this would serve

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Speaker 1: as the genesis for a new field of innovation in Disney,

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Speaker 1: which was audio and animatronics. The term is defined as

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Speaker 1: being or consisting of a lifelike electro mechanical figure of

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Speaker 1: a person or animal that has synchronized movement and sound. Although,

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Speaker 1: to be fair with the audio animatronics, it's synchronized to

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Speaker 1: sound and it's not the sound you hear, ha ha.

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Speaker 1: So Walt Disney has this idea. He says, you know,

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Speaker 1: we've got Disneyland, We're opening that up. What have we

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Speaker 1: created a restaurant. Let's make a Chinese restaurant. And in

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Speaker 1: the lobby of this Chinese restaurant is a figure of

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Speaker 1: a little old, wise Chinese man who will dispense words

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Speaker 1: of wisdom like Confucius. But it's not an actor. It's

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Speaker 1: actually gonna be a mechanical man. And a team got

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Speaker 1: to work designing that kind of a figure, and according

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Speaker 1: to Rogers, he said, quote you could always tell who

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Speaker 1: was working on the job because they never looked at

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Speaker 1: your eyes when you were talking to them. They were

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Speaker 1: always looking at your mouth end quote. They did eventually

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Speaker 1: build a mock up of a head for this figure,

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Speaker 1: but they didn't get much further than that. Disney had

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Speaker 1: decided to drop that idea for something else, and that

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Speaker 1: idea would eventually be the Enchanted Teaking Room, which we

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Speaker 1: will come back to in just a minute now. Disneyland

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Speaker 1: open on July sev In nineteen fifty nine, Walt Disney

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Speaker 1: was working on the design of a new land that

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Speaker 1: would go in Disneyland. He was already thinking about how

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Speaker 1: to build it out more and originally this was going

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Speaker 1: to be called Liberty Street. It would run parallel to

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Speaker 1: Main Street, and we feature an attraction called One Nation

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Speaker 1: Under God. In this attraction, the audience would be treated

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Speaker 1: to a view of audio animatronic figures of every single

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Speaker 1: president up on stage. Every president would be life sized,

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Speaker 1: would have lifelike motions, and would be animated. So he

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Speaker 1: tasked his engineers to get to work on that concept,

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Speaker 1: and they had to start somewhere. So the team chose

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Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln as their first figure, and they were able

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Speaker 1: to get a copy of a life mask that Lincoln

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Speaker 1: had made back before he was president. They got a

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Speaker 1: copy of the US and a sculptor named Blaine Gibson,

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Speaker 1: who would go on to create most of the faces

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Speaker 1: for Disney Animatronics, would use that as a guide to

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Speaker 1: create the mask for the Lincoln animatronic. By nineteen sixty one,

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Speaker 1: they had an early build of the Abraham Lincoln figure

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Speaker 1: and it had some limited mobility and expressions. It could

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Speaker 1: be controlled or manipulated if you prefer, live by an

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Speaker 1: actual UH engineer, so it wasn't automated yet, so it

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Speaker 1: was not the finished product, but it was apparently quite

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Speaker 1: impressive even early on, because in nineteen sixty two the

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Speaker 1: team received a visit from a guy named Robert Moses.

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Speaker 1: Robert Moses was a public official from New York City

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Speaker 1: who held numerous positions, none of them publicly elected, and

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Speaker 1: had become incredibly influential. He was responsible for massive projects

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Speaker 1: in New York, and some of them were controversial, and

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Speaker 1: he was in charge of getting New York City ready

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Speaker 1: for a World's Fair to be held there in nineteen four.

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Speaker 1: So Disney introduced Moses to the audio animatronic Abraham Lincoln.

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Speaker 1: An engineer controlled Lincoln to make him stand up and

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Speaker 1: reach out his arm to shake Moses hand, and Moses

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Speaker 1: was so impressed they declared the World's Fair would absolutely

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Speaker 1: have to feature this technology, which would require the team

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Speaker 1: to step up their work if they were to meet

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Speaker 1: that particular deadline. How did they do it, Well, I'll

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Speaker 1: tell you in just a moment, but first let's take

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Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. So the team

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Speaker 1: had a goal get a show featuring an audio animatronic

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Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln ready to go for the New York World's

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Speaker 1: Fair in nineteen sixty four, that was thirteen months away.

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Speaker 1: A few other components outside the technology fell into place

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Speaker 1: to make this paw stable. Because the tech part was

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Speaker 1: just one aspect. Another part was where is the money

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Speaker 1: going to come from? So part of that piece of

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Speaker 1: the puzzle was from the Illinois Commission. They had decided

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Speaker 1: that the theme for the Illinois pavilion at the World's

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Speaker 1: Fair would be the Land of Lincoln. The provisional chairman

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Speaker 1: for this commission was a guy named Fairfax Cone. So

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Speaker 1: Moses tells Cone, you gotta go and see what Walt

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Speaker 1: Disney is working on out in California. It's gonna make

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Speaker 1: you flip your lid. And Cone goes out there and

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Speaker 1: ends up meeting with Disney. He sees the Lincoln figure

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Speaker 1: for himself, he too, is really impressed. He would then

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Speaker 1: recommend to the permanent commission chairman, who was a Lincoln

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Speaker 1: historian named Ralph Newman, that he incorporate the Abraham Lincoln

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Speaker 1: figure in the Illinois pavilion. So Newman would end up

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Speaker 1: going out and meeting with Walt Disney, and he would

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Speaker 1: see the Abraham Lincoln figure, and he too was blown

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Speaker 1: away and said, yes, we absolutely need this. So the

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Speaker 1: next step was convincing the Governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner,

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Speaker 1: that this in fact was something that the state should

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Speaker 1: sponsor in order to get that out to the New

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Speaker 1: York World's Fair. So Otto Kerner met with Walt Disney

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Speaker 1: and He was convinced that the Lincoln figure would be

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Speaker 1: a great addition to the Illinois Pavilion, but the expense

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Speaker 1: of the project was pretty high. Originally, Disney said a

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Speaker 1: million dollars, and that was kind of a figure that

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Speaker 1: was out of nowhere, but that was the point, the

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Speaker 1: starting point for negotiations. Eventually, the Disney company would say,

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Speaker 1: we can go as low as six hundred thousand dollars,

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Speaker 1: and we could divide that up over two years, so

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Speaker 1: the first year would be three fifty thousand dollars, in

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Speaker 1: the second year would be two d fifty thousand dollars.

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Speaker 1: But that was kind of putting Illinois in a tough position.

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Speaker 1: Kerner was having to negotiate not just with Walt Disney,

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Speaker 1: but with Moses as well in the World's Fair, because

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Speaker 1: Moses was demanding that any exhibitor at the World's Fair

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Speaker 1: had to go through him and his departments for things

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Speaker 1: like power and set up and tear down and all

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Speaker 1: these other things that had fees associated with them. So

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Speaker 1: the state was going to have to pay two different

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Speaker 1: groups an enormous amount of money in order for this

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Speaker 1: to happen. But Newman knew that Moses was really impressed

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Speaker 1: by this Lincoln figure, and Newman and Disney together met

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Speaker 1: with Moses talked to him about this stuff. They were

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Speaker 1: trying to convince him to uh to lower some of

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Speaker 1: the world's fair requirements in order to make this happen.

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Speaker 1: And Newman, in fact even let it slip that he

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Speaker 1: was going off to meet with some people over the

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Speaker 1: United Nations to make it sound like things were super

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Speaker 1: important on his end, And eventually Moses decided to renegotiate,

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Speaker 1: and so they gave several concessions to the state of Illinois,

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Speaker 1: said you're not gonna have to pay these fees. These fees,

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Speaker 1: you're going to have a maximum amount of five thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars for something that could have cost you ten times

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Speaker 1: as much, and even agreed to a two hundred fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars stipend to help fund the Lincoln attraction, because

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Speaker 1: that's how impressed Moses was of it. So Disney had

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Speaker 1: cut that deal where the nineteen sixty four rental fee

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Speaker 1: for Lincoln would be three fifty thousand dollars, and then

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Speaker 1: there was the option for the state to extend that

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Speaker 1: through nine five, two hundred fifty thousand dollars after Illinois

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Speaker 1: got that two hundred fifty thousand dollars stipend from the

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Speaker 1: Fair that men They got Lincoln for the low low

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Speaker 1: price of a hundred grand for that first year, and

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Speaker 1: it also marked the one and only time in the

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Speaker 1: World's Fair history that the fair subsidized and exhibit. The

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Speaker 1: state gave Disney the official news in a nineteen sixty three,

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Speaker 1: so nineteen sixty four World's Fair was right around the corner.

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Speaker 1: It was super fast for them to get this turned around. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: the team was really hard at work to try and

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Speaker 1: put the show together. Much of the groundwork for audio

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Speaker 1: animatronics had already been laid by an electrician named Lee Adams,

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Speaker 1: who created the giant squid featured in the film twenty

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Speaker 1: Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. A lot of people point

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Speaker 1: at that as being the first true animatronic figure under Disney,

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Speaker 1: although of course that wasn't used as an attraction. It

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Speaker 1: was used in a movie. The tentacles of the massive

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Speaker 1: squid in that film were actually kind of like balloons,

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Speaker 1: so you would use a pneumatic system to pump air

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Speaker 1: into the tentacles that would cause them to unfold and

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Speaker 1: allowing the air to escape would cause the tentacles to

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Speaker 1: curl back up, so controlling the airflow would allow you

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Speaker 1: to puppeteer this giant squid. Disney Imagineers had also already

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Speaker 1: created a theme part attraction using audio animatronic technology at

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Speaker 1: that point. The Enchanted Tiki Room, which I mentioned earlier,

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Speaker 1: was the first attraction to feature audio animatronics, and it

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Speaker 1: opened at Disneyland in nineteen sixty three. It was originally

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Speaker 1: going to be that Chinese restaurant, then they decided to

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Speaker 1: change it to a Polynesian themed restaurant, and then they

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Speaker 1: decided to eventually drop the restaurant angle entirely and just

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Speaker 1: making an attraction. So how does it actually work well?

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Speaker 1: With the Tiki birds, Everything was pretty much binary. Every

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Speaker 1: single element, every moving element had a neutral position. So

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Speaker 1: let's say that we're looking at one of the four

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Speaker 1: hosts that are macaus, and you're looking at the beaks

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Speaker 1: of those macaus. The neutral position would be a closed beak.

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Speaker 1: So if nothing is going to the the that particular bird,

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Speaker 1: it's beak should be closed. A pneumatic system, which is

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Speaker 1: one that uses compressed air to do work, would activate

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Speaker 1: a SAWNI would actually activate and allow compressed air to

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Speaker 1: move through to force the mouth to an open position.

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Speaker 1: So if you were to do that manually, you would

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Speaker 1: pull a trigger and that would open up a valve

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Speaker 1: and that would cause air to flow through the system

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Speaker 1: to the appropriate element, causing the beak to open. But

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Speaker 1: how was this done automatically not with an actual human

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Speaker 1: operating the thing? Well, the secret was an ultrasonic tones

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Speaker 1: recorded onto magnetic tape, like like the kind of tape

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Speaker 1: you would use in a real to real tape machine

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Speaker 1: or even a cassette player. Disney used tape that was

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Speaker 1: an inch wide when it was first doing this, and

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Speaker 1: that inch wide tape that they used in in the

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Speaker 1: encantiqui room had fourteen tracks that you could lay on

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Speaker 1: that one inch of tape and you could put up

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Speaker 1: to sixteen signals on a single track. So you would

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Speaker 1: record these ultrasonic frequencies on the tape and when played back,

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Speaker 1: they would cause metallic reads to vibrate in very relays.

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Speaker 1: When the reads vibrated, they would close a circuit. That

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Speaker 1: circuit would send an electric current to a solenoid valve

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Speaker 1: that would allow air to flow to the appropriate feature

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Speaker 1: like that mccause beak causing it to open. And because

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Speaker 1: the system worked off these audio cues, Disney called the

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Speaker 1: tech audio animatronics. Even though the audio in question is

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Speaker 1: inaudible to humans, right, we don't hear in those ultrasonic frequencies.

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Speaker 1: So you could record an audible track that's within human

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Speaker 1: hearing on that same tape, and that way you synchronize

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Speaker 1: the ultrasonic frequencies that give the commands to the various

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Speaker 1: elements in the animatronic figure with the audio track, and

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Speaker 1: that way you can have the birds sort of. I

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Speaker 1: was gonna say lip sync, but I guess it's more

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Speaker 1: like beak sinc To the audio track you recorded. Some

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Speaker 1: of the audio animatronic technology Mr Lincoln dependent upon was similar.

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Speaker 1: They had the pneumatic switches for certain parts of the

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Speaker 1: Lincoln animatronic, but only for the smaller features, because pneumatics

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Speaker 1: would not supply the power needed to move some of

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Speaker 1: the larger elements, like arms. A person's arms are pretty

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Speaker 1: big and the the air would not be sufficiently powered

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Speaker 1: to move them. Also, if you did use air and

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Speaker 1: you did use enough compression to make the arms move,

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Speaker 1: they would shoot around like like like Lincoln was some

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Speaker 1: sort of crazy karate monster. That would not work very

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Speaker 1: well for the attraction, so instead they put hydraulic systems

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Speaker 1: in place for some of the larger elements. Hydraulics use

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Speaker 1: liquids and they use pressure to move the liquids around,

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Speaker 1: and the liquids act as a source of mechanical force.

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Speaker 1: So it's similar to pneumatics, but with hydraulics you can

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Speaker 1: do a lot more. You can move much heavier things,

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Speaker 1: and you can do so in a controlled way with

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Speaker 1: the right amount of pressure. So in theory, Mr Lincoln

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Speaker 1: would move according to the ultrasonic recordings on that magnetic tape,

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Speaker 1: and the playback would cause the reeds to vibrate, completing

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Speaker 1: circuits and forcing either air or liquid through the relevant

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Speaker 1: tubes to make Lincoln move in the appropriate way in theory.

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Speaker 1: Oh and um, let's talk about solenoids really quickly. I

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Speaker 1: mentioned it before. A solenoid valve. A solenoid is a

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Speaker 1: cylindrical coil of conductive wire, and when you pass a

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Speaker 1: current through the wire, it generates a magnetic field. You know,

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Speaker 1: this is a basic principle of electromagnetism. A solenoid valve

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Speaker 1: has a solenoid with a movable ferromagnetic core in the

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Speaker 1: center of this coil, so the core can move uh

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Speaker 1: laterally through this coil. The core is typically called a plunger,

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Speaker 1: So when there's no current running through the coil, the

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Speaker 1: plunger is in a rest position. Typically that means it's

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Speaker 1: closing off an opening that's otherwise inside this valve, so

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Speaker 1: the valve is closed. When you run a current through

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Speaker 1: the coil, it creates a magnetic field that pulls the

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Speaker 1: core out of its rest position. It lifts the plunger,

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Speaker 1: it opens the valve, so the solenoid valve acts as

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Speaker 1: the switch for the pneumatic and hydraulic elements. In addition,

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Speaker 1: the team began to develop a technology to make movements

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Speaker 1: more smooth and natural and less just on off or jerky.

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Speaker 1: You know, you didn't want your your positions to all

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Speaker 1: be one or two. You wanted to have a range,

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Speaker 1: especially once you started to get too larger figures, human

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Speaker 1: sized figures. So to do that, they need to create

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Speaker 1: systems that could respond to variable voltage. Increasing or decreasing.

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Speaker 1: The voltage would activate the complex movements. So instead of

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Speaker 1: going from one to two, you could adjust the voltage

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Speaker 1: slightly make it move from one to one point three

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Speaker 1: or one point seven, and you're not going all the

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Speaker 1: way to your final possible position, and that ended up

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Speaker 1: creating a much greater range of movements. Performers would use

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Speaker 1: either a potentialometer joystick for every single joint to send

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Speaker 1: varying voltages to the control system for that joint, or

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Speaker 1: later on they created harnesses, and the harnesses were able

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Speaker 1: to capture more complicated coordinated movements by measuring voltage changes

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Speaker 1: at all of the different various joints. Otherwise, doing something

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Speaker 1: seemingly as simple as making the figure lifting arm and

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Speaker 1: point with its hand would be incredibly difficult because every

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Speaker 1: single joint needed its own control system under the potentiometer

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Speaker 1: joystick approach, and you had to coordinate all of that

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Speaker 1: correctly right. You couldn't just have one person move the

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Speaker 1: arm and then rewind it back and then try and

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Speaker 1: move the wrist and then try and move the hand.

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Speaker 1: All of that was really complicated. So once you rehearse

431
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:51,200
Speaker 1: all this, whether it was with the potentiometer joysticks or

432
00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:54,439
Speaker 1: with the harness, you would then record this in the

433
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: form of audio tones overlaid on thirty five millimeter film stock,

434
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: and each joint would take up a reel of film,

435
00:26:01,320 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 1: and then all the reels would be recorded to a

436
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:07,520
Speaker 1: master tape. Lincoln would use both the potentiometer approach and

437
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 1: the harness approach. They got an actor named Royal Dano

438
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:13,960
Speaker 1: to provide the voice for Abraham Lincoln. That would actually

439
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: get some criticism later on, where people said that his

440
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 1: voice was not appropriate for President Lincoln because Lincoln's voice

441
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: was said to have kind of a high tenor pitch

442
00:26:24,280 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 1: to it and Royal Dano's voice had a lower pitch

443
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:32,159
Speaker 1: to it. But you know, some people argue that that

444
00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: was a show stopper, and other people say it wasn't

445
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:39,920
Speaker 1: such a big deal. Near mileage berries. One story does

446
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:42,359
Speaker 1: say that during an early trial run of the show,

447
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 1: one of the hydraulic hoses inside the Lincoln figure ruptured.

448
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:51,159
Speaker 1: The valve itself actually broke, and that red hydraulic fluid

449
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:55,239
Speaker 1: began to leak out and staying Lincoln's shirt, prompting one

450
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:58,200
Speaker 1: of the guests to joke that perhaps they were commemorating

451
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:03,040
Speaker 1: Lincoln's assassination, which did not make Walt Disney laugh. He

452
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:06,560
Speaker 1: then told his team to switch to clear hydraulic fluid,

453
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:09,119
Speaker 1: which they did from that point forward. Then there were

454
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: times when the valves didn't operate properly. They would cause

455
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:14,920
Speaker 1: the figure to jerk around unpredictably, which put more pressure

456
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 1: on the rest of the system. The technical issues forced

457
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 1: the team to delay the opening of the Lincoln exhibit

458
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:23,080
Speaker 1: at the New York World's Fair for about two weeks

459
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: while they worked out all the bugs. But when it

460
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:28,120
Speaker 1: did open, it was so convincing that some people were

461
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 1: certain that the figure was a human actor in a

462
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:34,679
Speaker 1: costume and not an audio animatronic figure. Now, when we

463
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 1: come back, I'll tell the rest of this story as

464
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:42,520
Speaker 1: well as what has happened since Mr Lincoln debuted at Disneyland,

465
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:45,360
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.

466
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 1: So while the World's Fair was going on, Disneyland prepared

467
00:27:56,560 --> 00:28:00,119
Speaker 1: its own identical attraction, the Great Moments with miss Or

468
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,400
Speaker 1: Lincoln attraction, that would open in the park on July eighth,

469
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:06,480
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, and it would use pretty much an

470
00:28:06,520 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: exact copy of the World's Fair exhibit. Both would operate

471
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:11,560
Speaker 1: around at the same time for a while, so you

472
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: had the same show happening on both coasts, and the

473
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: Disneyland version was sponsored originally by Lincoln Savings and Loan,

474
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 1: not the state of Illinois. It was housed in the

475
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 1: Opera House on Main Street, USA. Disneyland never built Liberty Street,

476
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:30,639
Speaker 1: but they did decide to repurpose the Opera House. That

477
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:33,080
Speaker 1: was one of the first, if not the very first

478
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:37,199
Speaker 1: building constructed for Disneyland, and during the construction phase for

479
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:39,240
Speaker 1: the park it had served as sort of a carpentry

480
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:42,520
Speaker 1: shop and workshop. Back in those days, Disneyland attractions were

481
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 1: divided up into various categories related to how elaborate the

482
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: attraction was. And this is where you get terms like

483
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:53,800
Speaker 1: a ticket or a ticket attraction, and that just referred

484
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 1: to the level uh that that attraction belonged to. A

485
00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 1: ticket attractions were simple attraction, little bitty things that you

486
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 1: you know, weren't weren't huge crowd pleasers. Maybe it's a

487
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:11,040
Speaker 1: simple ride on Main Street like a trolley ride, but

488
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 1: if you wanted to ride something a little more advanced,

489
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 1: then you needed to be ticket or a CE ticket.

490
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:18,600
Speaker 1: And the really big ticket items were E tickets. Great

491
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 1: Moments with Mr Lincoln was different. It was absolutely free

492
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 1: once you got into the Disneyland park. Ticket books did

493
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: often contain a coupon for the attraction, but that was

494
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: just meant to help encourage people to go see it.

495
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: There was no need to actually have a coupon in

496
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 1: order to see it. You could just walk right in.

497
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 1: The original script for Great Moments with Mr Lincoln included

498
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 1: snippets from various speeches Lincoln gave throughout his life. The

499
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: general theme was freedom, liberty, and independence, and it would

500
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: stay that way until January one, nineteen seventy three. At

501
00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: that point, Disneyland closed the attraction to convert it into

502
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 1: a new exhibit called The Walt Disney Story that was

503
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: to honor the life of Walt Disney himself, as he

504
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:01,480
Speaker 1: had passed away several years earlier for lung cancer. The

505
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:04,000
Speaker 1: Walt Disney Story was a twenty eight minute film about

506
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:07,240
Speaker 1: the life of Disney and his work, but guests were

507
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 1: upset at the removal of Mr Lincoln, and so in

508
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, the attraction was revised as The Walt

509
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:17,080
Speaker 1: Disney Story Featuring Great Moments with Mr Lincoln, and it

510
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:20,080
Speaker 1: became a combined exhibit. The pre show area was dedicated

511
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:22,760
Speaker 1: to Disney's life, and the theater was back to the

512
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:27,280
Speaker 1: Lincoln Show. In the late nineteen sixties, Disney Imagineers developed

513
00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:31,240
Speaker 1: the Digital Animation Control System, also known as DAX D

514
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: a c S. This system could record control commands onto

515
00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:39,239
Speaker 1: a disk rather than on magnetic tape. That meant that

516
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 1: programming could be done from a control board with various buttons, switches,

517
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:47,600
Speaker 1: and dials rather than with a harness or a potentiometer, joystick,

518
00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 1: and elements could easily be deleted or overwritten, so you

519
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 1: didn't have to worry about doing endless takes to get

520
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: just the right performance. You could just fix any mistakes

521
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: you made as you went along. In the Imagineers introduced

522
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 1: another system called compliance. Compliance was meant to reduce the

523
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 1: wear and tear on animatronics, as well as to make

524
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: them more show worthy. If an animatronic has to do

525
00:31:11,840 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 1: a quick move, let's say it's waving and it's moving

526
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 1: its arm from left to right. Once it reached the

527
00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:21,560
Speaker 1: end of its movement, it would frequently caused the entire

528
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:25,239
Speaker 1: figure to vibrate. Usually get that little robotic vibration at

529
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:26,920
Speaker 1: the end of a movement. If you ever see anyone

530
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: dance the robot, you know what I'm talking about. There's

531
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: that little jerky motion when you get to the end, well,

532
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: compliance would allow limbs to move just a little past

533
00:31:35,240 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 1: their normal end location, and that was in order to

534
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 1: be a shock absorber. So think about where your wave

535
00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:48,120
Speaker 1: would end and the the animatronic would start to slow down,

536
00:31:48,120 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: but it would continue to allow itself to move past

537
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 1: that point for just a little bit, so that it

538
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,440
Speaker 1: had more of a gradual slowing instead of just a

539
00:31:56,440 --> 00:31:59,200
Speaker 1: sudden stop, and you wouldn't get that robotic shake well

540
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: or great moments with Mr Lincoln underwent a refurbishment and

541
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: there was a new animatronic Lincoln installed that used more

542
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:11,560
Speaker 1: of this technology. It also had updated artificial skin, it

543
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: had a new costume, it had more advanced digital electronics.

544
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:17,920
Speaker 1: But that one closed in two thousand for another refurbishment,

545
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 1: and two thousand one it reopened and Lincoln now delivered

546
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 1: the Gettysburg address instead of this sort of sort of

547
00:32:26,240 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: grouping of various clips from various speeches, So now he

548
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 1: gave the Gettysburg address, and that version closed again in

549
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: two thousand five because Disneyland was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary

550
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: and the theater was given over to a special attraction

551
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:44,400
Speaker 1: about the history of the park. Itself. That kept on

552
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:47,640
Speaker 1: going until two thousand nine, and then Lincoln came back again.

553
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 1: The newest version is an electric animatronic figure. The speech

554
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: Lincoln gives is more or less the original one from

555
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,280
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty four World's Fair does have a few

556
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 1: edits to it. It's not quite as long as the

557
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:04,520
Speaker 1: original speech was, so it's more like the version, though

558
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 1: not exactly the same. In two thousand thirteen, Disney would

559
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:12,800
Speaker 1: shut down its internal division called MAPO M A p O.

560
00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 1: Some people say that stands for Mary Poppins because it

561
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:19,720
Speaker 1: was formed after the success of the movie Mary Poppins.

562
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:22,760
Speaker 1: Others say, no, it's manufacturing and production. That was where

563
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:27,120
Speaker 1: the name came from. But anyway, whether whatever its name

564
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 1: came from, that was the division that was responsible for

565
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:35,959
Speaker 1: producing audio animatronics and then later electronic version of animatronics.

566
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 1: All of them came out from there for the most part,

567
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 1: and toward the end of its run, more and more

568
00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: of those projects we're getting outsourced to other companies. So

569
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:49,600
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen the company decided, you know, we're just

570
00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: gonna go with this contract approach. We're not going to

571
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 1: build them in house anymore, and the company that's mostly

572
00:33:56,320 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 1: in charge of developing animatronics for Disney is Garner Holt Productions.

573
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,920
Speaker 1: That company is located out of California. It also makes

574
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:10,879
Speaker 1: animatronics for lots of other clients, not just Disney, but

575
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:14,920
Speaker 1: that's the company that's mostly responsible for them, and has

576
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:23,160
Speaker 1: had incredible demonstrations of really complicated, sophisticated animatronic figures that

577
00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 1: are eerily realistic, like we're talking Uncanny Valley style realistic,

578
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 1: including an Abraham Lincoln bust that makes faces that I

579
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:40,360
Speaker 1: would say start to lean toward the scary, but you

580
00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:42,759
Speaker 1: have to see the videos to to understand what I'm

581
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: talking about. Anyway, that wraps up the great moments with

582
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:51,280
Speaker 1: Mr Lincoln's story. It's fascinating to me to see how

583
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:55,400
Speaker 1: an idea could go from just hypothesis to an actual

584
00:34:55,560 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: working attraction. How do you go for um, I want

585
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:05,240
Speaker 1: this thing to exist, to making it so. Walt Disney's

586
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: imagineers have a reputation for doing that time and time again,

587
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:15,280
Speaker 1: and the attractions that Disney are are evidence of that fact,

588
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:17,919
Speaker 1: And as a lifelong Disney fan, I have a great

589
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 1: appreciation for that. Although I have seen comparable work at

590
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: other parks, I mean, there are plenty of other places

591
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:28,640
Speaker 1: that have used that same philosophy to great effect, like

592
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:32,799
Speaker 1: Universal's Islands of Adventure, for example. But that wraps up

593
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: this fourth of July episode. If you have any suggestions

594
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:38,799
Speaker 1: for future episodes of tech Stuff let me know. Why

595
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: don't you send me an email the addresses tech Stuff

596
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a

597
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 1: line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of

598
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: those is tech Stuff hs W. Don't forget to follow

599
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 1: us on Instagram and I'll talk to you again really soon.

600
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

601
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com wh