WEBVTT - TechStuff Moments with Mr. Lincoln 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.920 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.280 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:20.720 how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:23.640 this episode is to publish on the fourth of July 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:27.360 two thousand eighteen. And here in the United States that 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:30.920 date is treated with some reverence, as we consider it 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:35.520 Independence Day. And back in seventeen seventy six, the Continental 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:39.720 Congress representing the thirteen colonies of the America's declared those 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:43.920 colonies a new nation called the United States of America. 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:48.120 But that actually happened on July two, seventeen seventy six. 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:50.199 John Adams was convinced that that was going to be 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:53.040 the day we all celebrated. As it turned out, we 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:54.960 decided to do it on July four, because that was 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:59.160 the day the Declaration of Independence, that famous document outlining 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:03.280 America's are uments for seceding from the British Empire was 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:07.720 dated is dated on July fourth, seventeen seventy six. Also, um, 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:11.440 despite what popular musical numbers would have you believe, it's 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:14.479 mostly likely that that most of the representatives did not 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.200 sign the Declaration of Independence that day. They probably did 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:22.440 it on August second, seventeen seventy six. But never mind 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:24.800 all that. The fourth of July is when the US 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:28.800 celebrates Independence Day. Whenever it happened doesn't matter. It just 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.000 matters when we celebrate it. And in the past on 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:35.800 tech stuff, I've tried to time vaguely related topics to 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:39.080 that date. Whenever we've published on or around the fourth 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:43.000 of July, we've talked about the tech of say Independence Day, 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:46.880 the movie, or like Fireworks. And today I want to 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:51.080 talk about a Disneyland attraction called Great Moments with Mr 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:56.040 Lincoln because I feel that's sort of quintessentially American, even 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:58.760 though Lincoln was our sixteenth president and governed in the 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.560 nineteenth century, not the teenth century, but never mind America, right, 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:05.840 And you know, they're talking about Disneyland, something that is 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:10.040 truly a piece of Americana, and Great Moments with Mr 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:13.680 Lincoln is located on Main Street, USA. That was Walt 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:20.160 Disney's monument to the classic Americana. It's a small town, 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:25.359 almost like an America that never was an idealized America. 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:28.520 So I figured it was a good topic to cover 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:31.840 in this episode. Now, I have done an episode about 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:34.320 audio animatronics in the past, and I'm going to be 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:37.560 covering some of that ground again here. But we're specifically 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:41.880 looking at the development of the Mr. Lincoln attraction in 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:44.960 this episode, so I'm not going to focus too much 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:47.720 on the other stuff. I'll have some stuff to say 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.160 about some of the predecessors because that's important to understand 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:53.000 in order to figure out how Mr Lincoln worked. So 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:56.480 if you're unfamiliar with the attraction great Moments with Mr Lincoln, 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.080 here's kind of how it goes. You would go into 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.840 a building is the Grand Opera House on Main Street, 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:06.600 USA and Disneyland, and you would see a little pre 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:10.799 show piece before going into a theater, and you'd sit down. 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.640 You get another little film, and then a screen would 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:17.920 lift up and you would see, seated center stage, the 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:23.320 audio animatronic figure of Abraham Lincoln. And then Abraham Lincoln 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:26.520 stands up out of his chair and speaks to the crowd. 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.560 And the content and the technology of the attraction have 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.240 changed several times throughout the years. In fact, these days 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:37.480 you wouldn't call it audio animatronics at all. It's the 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:39.440 only reason anyone would refer to it that way is 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:41.920 just because that's what the technology had been called for 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:46.360 years and years and years. But the current incarnation at 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:49.800 Disneyland isn't really audio animatronic. It's not working on that 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.520 same system. Now, before I talk about how it works, 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.440 let's go into the history of audio animatronics and the 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:57.920 development of this attraction in particular, because I think it's 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:01.760 pretty fascinating to learn abou not just the technology side, 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:04.839 but the business side of this. So first we got 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:08.400 to go back to nineteen That's when Walt Disney took 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.560 his family on a vacation in Europe, and on that trip, 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:17.680 Disney got enamored with some clockwork mechanical toys, including a 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:19.839 mechanical little bird. You would wind it up and it 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.080 with tweet and flap its wings and it would move 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:25.440 in a pretty convincing way. And he was inspired by 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:29.039 that to take these toys back to his his folks 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:32.400 over at Walt Disney Studios and say, you know, we've 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:37.479 we've animated stuff on film. We've taken cells and we've 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:40.680 drawn pictures on them, and we've taken photographs of that 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:42.720 and turned it into a film where it looks like 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:46.280 the inanimate is moving around What if we did something similar, 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:48.200 but we did it in the real world, we brought 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.320 it into the three dimensions around us, and make make 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:55.120 this idea sort of a grander scale. We're gonna take 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:58.000 these little mechanical elements that I've seen here and make 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:00.839 it something much bigger. So you were turned to California. 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.560 He brought ideas to his team of developers that we 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:07.640 now today would call imagineers. That's a portmanteau of imagination 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:11.240 and engineer, and he said, what if we were to 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:15.080 make something like this but bigger? So in nineteen fifty one, 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:18.480 he gave an assignment to two of his employees, Roger 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:24.359 Braggy and Wattle rogers Uh. Roger Braggy was born in 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:27.600 nineteen o eight in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and he attended a 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:31.920 vocational school and trained in machine shop work. He would 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:34.359 relocate to Los Angeles and he found a lot of 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.480 work in the film industry. He even developed technologies like 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:41.560 a rear projection system for major movie studios, and in 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:44.080 nineteen thirty nine he got an invitation to join the 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:47.560 Walt Disney Studio as a precision machinist. One of his 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:51.640 first jobs he had was to install the multiplane animation 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:55.919 camera in the studio's brand new Burbank location. Now, this 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:59.279 was a camera that consisted of not just a film camera, 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:02.560 but also a massive frame, and that frame could hold 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:06.760 multiple layers or planes of an animated cell. So you 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:10.160 might have a foreground image, you might have a main image, 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:12.360 you might have a couple of background images, and they 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:16.240 would all be held at different heights relative to this 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.240 camera lens. And then by moving the frames either closer 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.320 to or further away from the camera, you can make 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.680 elements within that animated scene appear to move at different 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.880 speeds and give this illusion of depth. So it's almost 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:33.360 like you're zooming in through an animated scene. And that 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:37.480 was something that was really really innovative. Well, also, I 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:41.320 should mention that Disney did not necessarily invent that one 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:45.560 of his former employees more or less invented this approach 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.880 of eye works, but that's a different story. Disney made 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.599 extensive use of that technology when his studio made snow 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:56.800 White in the Seven Dwarfs. By nine, Broggy had been 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.640 promoted to the head of the studio Machine Shot and 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.840 when all started thinking about building a theme park, Braggy 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:07.320 was one of his go to engineers for attractions. Rogers meanwhile, 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:11.240 was born in nineteen nineteen in Stratton, Colorado, and he 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:14.840 studied art at an institute in Los Angeles. He became 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:19.000 proficient in lots of different areas of art, including sculpting, 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.440 so he joined the Walt Disney Studio also in nineteen 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:26.239 thirty nine along with Braggy, and early on he worked 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:30.800 primarily as an animator on films like Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella, 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.800 and Peter Pan. He also created props and managers for 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:36.680 the studio's live action films, and like Braggy, he would 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.160 be invited by Disney to work on attractions for the 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:42.920 upcoming Disneyland theme park. So Walt Disney comes up to 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:45.160 these two guys and he says, I want you to 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:50.760 build me a figure approximately nine inches tall of a 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.600 man that can move around like a human can, so 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.360 sort of like a puppet, but not puppeteered by any 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:02.440 person in real time. It would be an entire mechanical 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:05.440 system that would be able to do this, and it 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.480 was called Project Little Man. So as to build a 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:11.720 nine inch human figure that could move and and move 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.000 its mouth as if it's talking and be able to 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:18.400 synchronize that with an actual voice track, and essentially he 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:20.560 just wanted to bring that concept of animation into the 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:24.160 real world. Buddy Ebsen, the actor who would become Jed 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.520 Clampett and the Beverly Hillbillies, would come into the studio 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:30.800 and he did this whole song and dance routine in 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.120 front of a screen that was just a bunch of 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:35.800 grid lines, so that the animators had a reference they 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:39.440 could work from. And Buddy would later say of Disney, quote, 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:41.520 he took me to a room where there were these 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:44.680 seven little guys with aprons and thick glasses working on 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:47.559 a contrivance that pulled wires, and a little mechanical man 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:50.720 that moved his arms, legs, head, and mouth end quote. 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:55.040 So the two engineers lead this team. They used cables 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.840 and cams and hinged limbs to create sort of a 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:02.080 rudimentary must soul in skeletal system for this little figure, 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:06.000 and the machinery would end up being underneath this little 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:09.920 figure's stage. So the whole thing was actually quite large. 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:11.920 The figure was only nine inches tall, but the whole 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.280 system was really big, and it wasn't really that dissimilar 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.400 to a puppet, except again, the puppeteer was mechanical, not 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:24.840 a human, and it was it was. It kind of worked, 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.720 but it wasn't practical. Later, when it came time to 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.320 look into making audio animatronics for theme park attractions, Broggy 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:34.640 would actually go to All Disney and say that we 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:38.160 should really create larger life sized figures. It would actually 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:40.720 make it easier because you could fit a lot of 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.440 the elements inside the figure itself instead of having to 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:49.080 find places in the environment to hide all the mechanisms 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.480 that would make the figure move. So this would serve 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:55.400 as the genesis for a new field of innovation in Disney, 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:59.120 which was audio and animatronics. The term is defined as 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:04.200 being or consisting of a lifelike electro mechanical figure of 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:08.760 a person or animal that has synchronized movement and sound. Although, 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.480 to be fair with the audio animatronics, it's synchronized to 0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:15.960 sound and it's not the sound you hear, ha ha. 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:19.840 So Walt Disney has this idea. He says, you know, 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:22.920 we've got Disneyland, We're opening that up. What have we 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.560 created a restaurant. Let's make a Chinese restaurant. And in 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:29.400 the lobby of this Chinese restaurant is a figure of 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:33.800 a little old, wise Chinese man who will dispense words 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.800 of wisdom like Confucius. But it's not an actor. It's 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:39.560 actually gonna be a mechanical man. And a team got 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.600 to work designing that kind of a figure, and according 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.079 to Rogers, he said, quote you could always tell who 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:47.160 was working on the job because they never looked at 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:49.360 your eyes when you were talking to them. They were 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:53.040 always looking at your mouth end quote. They did eventually 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:55.760 build a mock up of a head for this figure, 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.440 but they didn't get much further than that. Disney had 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:02.160 decided to drop that idea for something else, and that 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:04.960 idea would eventually be the Enchanted Teaking Room, which we 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:07.800 will come back to in just a minute now. Disneyland 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:13.280 open on July sev In nineteen fifty nine, Walt Disney 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:15.920 was working on the design of a new land that 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:18.719 would go in Disneyland. He was already thinking about how 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.400 to build it out more and originally this was going 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.480 to be called Liberty Street. It would run parallel to 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:28.240 Main Street, and we feature an attraction called One Nation 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.920 Under God. In this attraction, the audience would be treated 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.840 to a view of audio animatronic figures of every single 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:40.080 president up on stage. Every president would be life sized, 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:44.880 would have lifelike motions, and would be animated. So he 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:47.760 tasked his engineers to get to work on that concept, 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.120 and they had to start somewhere. So the team chose 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.400 Abraham Lincoln as their first figure, and they were able 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:56.920 to get a copy of a life mask that Lincoln 0:11:56.960 --> 0:11:59.480 had made back before he was president. They got a 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:02.280 copy of the US and a sculptor named Blaine Gibson, 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:04.800 who would go on to create most of the faces 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.200 for Disney Animatronics, would use that as a guide to 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:12.440 create the mask for the Lincoln animatronic. By nineteen sixty one, 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:15.680 they had an early build of the Abraham Lincoln figure 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.800 and it had some limited mobility and expressions. It could 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:23.600 be controlled or manipulated if you prefer, live by an 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:28.160 actual UH engineer, so it wasn't automated yet, so it 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:30.880 was not the finished product, but it was apparently quite 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:34.360 impressive even early on, because in nineteen sixty two the 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.480 team received a visit from a guy named Robert Moses. 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:41.600 Robert Moses was a public official from New York City 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:46.320 who held numerous positions, none of them publicly elected, and 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:51.440 had become incredibly influential. He was responsible for massive projects 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:54.520 in New York, and some of them were controversial, and 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.280 he was in charge of getting New York City ready 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:01.360 for a World's Fair to be held there in nineteen four. 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:07.320 So Disney introduced Moses to the audio animatronic Abraham Lincoln. 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.280 An engineer controlled Lincoln to make him stand up and 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:13.360 reach out his arm to shake Moses hand, and Moses 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:17.319 was so impressed they declared the World's Fair would absolutely 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:21.360 have to feature this technology, which would require the team 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:23.760 to step up their work if they were to meet 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.240 that particular deadline. How did they do it, Well, I'll 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:30.360 tell you in just a moment, but first let's take 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:41.920 a quick break to thank our sponsor. So the team 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:46.520 had a goal get a show featuring an audio animatronic 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:50.280 Abraham Lincoln ready to go for the New York World's 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:54.840 Fair in nineteen sixty four, that was thirteen months away. 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:59.160 A few other components outside the technology fell into place 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:01.360 to make this paw stable. Because the tech part was 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:05.520 just one aspect. Another part was where is the money 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.000 going to come from? So part of that piece of 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:13.000 the puzzle was from the Illinois Commission. They had decided 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:16.600 that the theme for the Illinois pavilion at the World's 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:20.800 Fair would be the Land of Lincoln. The provisional chairman 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.280 for this commission was a guy named Fairfax Cone. So 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:28.320 Moses tells Cone, you gotta go and see what Walt 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.360 Disney is working on out in California. It's gonna make 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:35.160 you flip your lid. And Cone goes out there and 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.920 ends up meeting with Disney. He sees the Lincoln figure 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:42.400 for himself, he too, is really impressed. He would then 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:46.800 recommend to the permanent commission chairman, who was a Lincoln 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.680 historian named Ralph Newman, that he incorporate the Abraham Lincoln 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:55.000 figure in the Illinois pavilion. So Newman would end up 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:57.280 going out and meeting with Walt Disney, and he would 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:59.480 see the Abraham Lincoln figure, and he too was blown 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:03.400 away and said, yes, we absolutely need this. So the 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:06.840 next step was convincing the Governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner, 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:10.520 that this in fact was something that the state should 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.000 sponsor in order to get that out to the New 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:16.840 York World's Fair. So Otto Kerner met with Walt Disney 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:19.640 and He was convinced that the Lincoln figure would be 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:23.000 a great addition to the Illinois Pavilion, but the expense 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:28.080 of the project was pretty high. Originally, Disney said a 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:30.400 million dollars, and that was kind of a figure that 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.800 was out of nowhere, but that was the point, the 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:38.200 starting point for negotiations. Eventually, the Disney company would say, 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.200 we can go as low as six hundred thousand dollars, 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.240 and we could divide that up over two years, so 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:46.840 the first year would be three fifty thousand dollars, in 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:49.400 the second year would be two d fifty thousand dollars. 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:56.280 But that was kind of putting Illinois in a tough position. 0:15:56.640 --> 0:16:00.560 Kerner was having to negotiate not just with Walt Disney, 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:04.400 but with Moses as well in the World's Fair, because 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:09.600 Moses was demanding that any exhibitor at the World's Fair 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:13.080 had to go through him and his departments for things 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:17.200 like power and set up and tear down and all 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:20.480 these other things that had fees associated with them. So 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:23.200 the state was going to have to pay two different 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:25.880 groups an enormous amount of money in order for this 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:31.320 to happen. But Newman knew that Moses was really impressed 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:35.520 by this Lincoln figure, and Newman and Disney together met 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:38.880 with Moses talked to him about this stuff. They were 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:43.000 trying to convince him to uh to lower some of 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:45.560 the world's fair requirements in order to make this happen. 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:49.480 And Newman, in fact even let it slip that he 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:51.400 was going off to meet with some people over the 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.760 United Nations to make it sound like things were super 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:59.800 important on his end, And eventually Moses decided to renegotiate, 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:04.359 and so they gave several concessions to the state of Illinois, 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:06.800 said you're not gonna have to pay these fees. These fees, 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.119 you're going to have a maximum amount of five thousand 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.119 dollars for something that could have cost you ten times 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:16.280 as much, and even agreed to a two hundred fifty 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:20.760 thousand dollars stipend to help fund the Lincoln attraction, because 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.400 that's how impressed Moses was of it. So Disney had 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:29.840 cut that deal where the nineteen sixty four rental fee 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:32.840 for Lincoln would be three fifty thousand dollars, and then 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:35.080 there was the option for the state to extend that 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:39.560 through nine five, two hundred fifty thousand dollars after Illinois 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:41.840 got that two hundred fifty thousand dollars stipend from the 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.720 Fair that men They got Lincoln for the low low 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:47.840 price of a hundred grand for that first year, and 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:52.400 it also marked the one and only time in the 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:57.280 World's Fair history that the fair subsidized and exhibit. The 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:02.080 state gave Disney the official news in a nineteen sixty three, 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:05.560 so nineteen sixty four World's Fair was right around the corner. 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:09.360 It was super fast for them to get this turned around. Meanwhile, 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.119 the team was really hard at work to try and 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.440 put the show together. Much of the groundwork for audio 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:19.400 animatronics had already been laid by an electrician named Lee Adams, 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:23.000 who created the giant squid featured in the film twenty 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:26.000 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. A lot of people point 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:30.960 at that as being the first true animatronic figure under Disney, 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:33.639 although of course that wasn't used as an attraction. It 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:36.800 was used in a movie. The tentacles of the massive 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:41.040 squid in that film were actually kind of like balloons, 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:43.480 so you would use a pneumatic system to pump air 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.600 into the tentacles that would cause them to unfold and 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:50.960 allowing the air to escape would cause the tentacles to 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.359 curl back up, so controlling the airflow would allow you 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:58.920 to puppeteer this giant squid. Disney Imagineers had also already 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:04.040 created a theme part attraction using audio animatronic technology at 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.680 that point. The Enchanted Tiki Room, which I mentioned earlier, 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.240 was the first attraction to feature audio animatronics, and it 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:15.720 opened at Disneyland in nineteen sixty three. It was originally 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.720 going to be that Chinese restaurant, then they decided to 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.600 change it to a Polynesian themed restaurant, and then they 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:24.560 decided to eventually drop the restaurant angle entirely and just 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.640 making an attraction. So how does it actually work well? 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:31.600 With the Tiki birds, Everything was pretty much binary. Every 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:35.960 single element, every moving element had a neutral position. So 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:37.960 let's say that we're looking at one of the four 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:42.760 hosts that are macaus, and you're looking at the beaks 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:47.680 of those macaus. The neutral position would be a closed beak. 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:51.920 So if nothing is going to the the that particular bird, 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.680 it's beak should be closed. A pneumatic system, which is 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.280 one that uses compressed air to do work, would activate 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:02.760 a SAWNI would actually activate and allow compressed air to 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:05.400 move through to force the mouth to an open position. 0:20:05.520 --> 0:20:08.520 So if you were to do that manually, you would 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:10.879 pull a trigger and that would open up a valve 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:12.960 and that would cause air to flow through the system 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:15.720 to the appropriate element, causing the beak to open. But 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:19.560 how was this done automatically not with an actual human 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:24.199 operating the thing? Well, the secret was an ultrasonic tones 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:28.520 recorded onto magnetic tape, like like the kind of tape 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:30.720 you would use in a real to real tape machine 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:34.720 or even a cassette player. Disney used tape that was 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:37.199 an inch wide when it was first doing this, and 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:39.720 that inch wide tape that they used in in the 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:44.440 encantiqui room had fourteen tracks that you could lay on 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:47.840 that one inch of tape and you could put up 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:50.560 to sixteen signals on a single track. So you would 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:55.840 record these ultrasonic frequencies on the tape and when played back, 0:20:56.040 --> 0:21:00.720 they would cause metallic reads to vibrate in very relays. 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.840 When the reads vibrated, they would close a circuit. That 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:09.919 circuit would send an electric current to a solenoid valve 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:12.879 that would allow air to flow to the appropriate feature 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:16.760 like that mccause beak causing it to open. And because 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:20.320 the system worked off these audio cues, Disney called the 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:24.399 tech audio animatronics. Even though the audio in question is 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:28.640 inaudible to humans, right, we don't hear in those ultrasonic frequencies. 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:33.000 So you could record an audible track that's within human 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:36.920 hearing on that same tape, and that way you synchronize 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:41.159 the ultrasonic frequencies that give the commands to the various 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:45.600 elements in the animatronic figure with the audio track, and 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.760 that way you can have the birds sort of. I 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:50.800 was gonna say lip sync, but I guess it's more 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:54.800 like beak sinc To the audio track you recorded. Some 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:59.920 of the audio animatronic technology Mr Lincoln dependent upon was similar. 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.239 They had the pneumatic switches for certain parts of the 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:08.800 Lincoln animatronic, but only for the smaller features, because pneumatics 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:11.280 would not supply the power needed to move some of 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:15.200 the larger elements, like arms. A person's arms are pretty 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:19.520 big and the the air would not be sufficiently powered 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:22.320 to move them. Also, if you did use air and 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:26.159 you did use enough compression to make the arms move, 0:22:26.200 --> 0:22:29.359 they would shoot around like like like Lincoln was some 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:32.360 sort of crazy karate monster. That would not work very 0:22:32.400 --> 0:22:36.760 well for the attraction, so instead they put hydraulic systems 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:39.959 in place for some of the larger elements. Hydraulics use 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:43.919 liquids and they use pressure to move the liquids around, 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:46.879 and the liquids act as a source of mechanical force. 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:50.200 So it's similar to pneumatics, but with hydraulics you can 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:53.679 do a lot more. You can move much heavier things, 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:55.760 and you can do so in a controlled way with 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:58.520 the right amount of pressure. So in theory, Mr Lincoln 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:02.359 would move according to the ultrasonic recordings on that magnetic tape, 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:05.520 and the playback would cause the reeds to vibrate, completing 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.439 circuits and forcing either air or liquid through the relevant 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:13.280 tubes to make Lincoln move in the appropriate way in theory. 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:16.879 Oh and um, let's talk about solenoids really quickly. I 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:19.879 mentioned it before. A solenoid valve. A solenoid is a 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:23.040 cylindrical coil of conductive wire, and when you pass a 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:26.359 current through the wire, it generates a magnetic field. You know, 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:31.400 this is a basic principle of electromagnetism. A solenoid valve 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:35.680 has a solenoid with a movable ferromagnetic core in the 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:39.680 center of this coil, so the core can move uh 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:44.480 laterally through this coil. The core is typically called a plunger, 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:47.000 So when there's no current running through the coil, the 0:23:47.040 --> 0:23:49.840 plunger is in a rest position. Typically that means it's 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:53.879 closing off an opening that's otherwise inside this valve, so 0:23:53.920 --> 0:23:56.160 the valve is closed. When you run a current through 0:23:56.200 --> 0:23:58.760