Speaker 1: Get tests of technology with text stuff from stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I
Speaker 1: am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm a senior writer with
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and I cover all things
Speaker 1: what beat. As my old co host Chris Palette would say,
Speaker 1: stuff what Beeps was the alternative title for tech Stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about something that's near and
Speaker 1: dear to my heart, and that is Audio animatronics, specifically
Speaker 1: their origin with Disneyland. I am an enormous Disney fanatic.
Speaker 1: I consider myself a Disney fan of film, of television,
Speaker 1: of their theme parks, probably not necessarily in that order,
Speaker 1: maybe film first, then theme parks, then television, but I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of Disney stuff. And recently, when I
Speaker 1: was on a trip to Los Angeles to attend E three,
Speaker 1: I found myself with a day with nothing to do.
Speaker 1: I had hoped to book some meetings that did not happen.
Speaker 1: So instead of just sitting around my hotel room feeling
Speaker 1: sorry for myself in a city where I really didn't
Speaker 1: know anybody, I decided to hop on down to Orange County, California,
Speaker 1: that is the home of Disneyland and to go to
Speaker 1: the happiest place on Earth. It was not my first
Speaker 1: time at Disneyland, but this was the first time I'd
Speaker 1: ever gone to Disneyland completely on my own, and I
Speaker 1: was a little worried about that, like, how am I
Speaker 1: going to have fun just by myself. Turns out Disneyland
Speaker 1: did most of the work for me. I didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry so much and had a great time. But
Speaker 1: it also reminded me of how much I love the
Speaker 1: technology and innovation that goes behind Disneyland. And honestly, I
Speaker 1: could do maybe a dozen episodes about different technologies that
Speaker 1: were pioneered or perfected at the Disney any theme parks,
Speaker 1: because there are a ton of them that Disney either
Speaker 1: directly had a hand in developing or tweeked it in
Speaker 1: a way to elevate it beyond what it used to be.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of examples of that. Today, we're specifically
Speaker 1: going to focus on audio animatronics, And for those who
Speaker 1: have not heard what this term is or have any
Speaker 1: idea what it means, this was a system that Walt
Speaker 1: Disney's company pioneered to create animated physical three dimensional figures.
Speaker 1: So in a way, it's kind of similar to puppetry, right,
Speaker 1: with a puppet, typically you're manipulating some sort of three
Speaker 1: dimensional figure. Beyond shadow puppets and that sort of puppetry,
Speaker 1: which is amazing all on its own, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: your traditional hand puppets, rod puppets, and marionettes. That involves
Speaker 1: manipulating an inanimate object in a way to make it
Speaker 1: seem like it has life, that has anima, and that
Speaker 1: you are using some sort of system, whether it's rods
Speaker 1: or you know, the puppet is essentially a glove puppet,
Speaker 1: or you're using strings with a marionette to create this
Speaker 1: illusion of movement. Well, Disney wanted to create something similar,
Speaker 1: only these would run on a mechanical system that would
Speaker 1: be painstakingly programmed rather than being under the direct control
Speaker 1: of a human being. Those figures, when they're working properly,
Speaker 1: would replicate those same motions and have the same performance
Speaker 1: every single time. So the time the character is doing
Speaker 1: a show, it's exactly the way it was the first time.
Speaker 1: So once you perfect a show and you program that
Speaker 1: into these these figures, you then have the perfect show
Speaker 1: every single time you run it, assuming everything is working properly. Now,
Speaker 1: anyone who has been to Disney enough times knows that's
Speaker 1: a big assumption to make. Sometimes things just don't do,
Speaker 1: not work really well. I'll tell you about one of
Speaker 1: those times that I experienced firsthand later on in this show.
Speaker 1: But the technology itself is phenomenal, and even when it
Speaker 1: isn't working properly, that does not take away from how
Speaker 1: amazing this tech really is, especially when you consider what
Speaker 1: people had to work with back in the fifties and
Speaker 1: early sixties when they were first developing these systems. It
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing stuff. Now, the reason why Disney wanted
Speaker 1: this in the first place is he really loved the
Speaker 1: idea of creating a real, three dimensional experience similar to
Speaker 1: what you would get with an animated film. Animated films
Speaker 1: can be perfected right. You can sit there and sketch
Speaker 1: it out and get it just right before you release
Speaker 1: it as a movie. He wanted to have that same
Speaker 1: sort of experience, but in the real physical world. He
Speaker 1: was a stickler for perfection, had very very very high standards,
Speaker 1: and um and the people who were for him, they
Speaker 1: also would end up having very high standards. Everyone wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that they met Disney's expectations. Now, You
Speaker 1: can find animatronic figures in lots of Disney attractions, including
Speaker 1: the Enchanted Tiki Room, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion,
Speaker 1: Great Moments with Mr Lincoln, the Hall of Presidents, which
Speaker 1: would be over at the Magic Kingdom, and Disney World,
Speaker 1: and tons more. There are lots of examples. There are
Speaker 1: also some attractions that had moving figures that didn't use
Speaker 1: the audio animatronics system. So, for example, the Jungle Cruise
Speaker 1: ride has animated animal figures. As you ride through, you
Speaker 1: see hippopotamuses and crocodiles and elephants, but these were running
Speaker 1: on a very simple mechanical loop system. They were not
Speaker 1: specifically audio animatronic. They they worked on something that was
Speaker 1: a little less sophisticated than what would follow. So you
Speaker 1: have both at Disney Parks. And I'm also sad that
Speaker 1: I can't have Holly on this episode. Holly, who's one
Speaker 1: of the co hosts of Stuff You Missed in History Class.
Speaker 1: Apart from being a brilliant podcaster and an avid historian,
Speaker 1: she is an enormous fan of all things Disney and
Speaker 1: uh and she doesn't just give me a run for
Speaker 1: my money, she leaves me in the dust. I love Disney.
Speaker 1: I have been to the Disney parks dozens of times,
Speaker 1: but Holly is a step beyond even my own obsession.
Speaker 1: So I am sad that I can't have her here
Speaker 1: because I am absolutely certain that she would be here
Speaker 1: dropping nuggets of knowledge and trivia about these various Disney
Speaker 1: attractions that I have yet to uncover. So maybe someday
Speaker 1: I will be able to have Holly on this show,
Speaker 1: and we'll do a Disney oriented episode about some other
Speaker 1: type of tech. In the meantime, there are are some
Speaker 1: other podcasts we've done that relate to Disney. I did
Speaker 1: one about the Pepper's Ghost effect, which is used extensively
Speaker 1: in the Haunted Mansion Ride. Pepper's Ghost involves reflective surfaces
Speaker 1: and using lighting in a way so that you can
Speaker 1: create the illusion of a ghostly figure appearing before you,
Speaker 1: but what you're actually looking at is a reflection of
Speaker 1: a physical figure that's just lit in a very bright space,
Speaker 1: whereas you're in a very dark space. Uh. The famous
Speaker 1: ballroom sequence in the Haunted Mansion Ride is a big
Speaker 1: example of Pepper's Ghost. So you can go and check
Speaker 1: out those episodes of tech stuff. If this is not
Speaker 1: enough Disney for you. All right, Let's talk specifically about
Speaker 1: what I wanted to concentrate on today. To do that,
Speaker 1: we have to mention Walt Disney because he's central to
Speaker 1: our story. He's kind of our main character if this
Speaker 1: were a narrative. His full name was Walter Elias Disney.
Speaker 1: He was born in nineteen o one in Illinois. He
Speaker 1: grew up in Missouri and attended high school in Chicago.
Speaker 1: He was studying art primarily. When he was sixteen, he
Speaker 1: dropped out to join the army, but they rejected him
Speaker 1: because he was too young. He then joined the Red
Speaker 1: Cross and was shipped over to Europe and drove ambulances
Speaker 1: during World War One in France. Once he is his
Speaker 1: work with the Red Cross was done over there, he
Speaker 1: moved back to the United States and he began to
Speaker 1: work for an ad company. He was making film and animations.
Speaker 1: Uh then he would go on to create his own studio,
Speaker 1: which saw some modest success, but then it ran into
Speaker 1: some hard times and eventually he had to declare bankruptcy
Speaker 1: under his first studio. But despite that, he didn't give up.
Speaker 1: He decided to make a go at it again, and
Speaker 1: he and his brother Roy were able to co found
Speaker 1: the Walt Disney Company, and from that moment forward, his
Speaker 1: influence on tech has been considerable, from actual innovations and
Speaker 1: technology to how creators can protect their intellectual property. Now,
Speaker 1: not all of those influences have been met with enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Disney is one of the reasons why the United States
Speaker 1: has such incredibly extensive intellectual property protection laws, stuff like
Speaker 1: copyright and trademark laws that protect well beyond the lifetime
Speaker 1: of the creator. UH. A lot of that has to
Speaker 1: do with Disney, as a corporate entity, lobbying to extend
Speaker 1: those parameters. So Disney's impact on technology has been enormous
Speaker 1: in both very specific ways that relate to particular technologies
Speaker 1: to the way that those technologies are protected under intellectual
Speaker 1: property law. So Disney's use of sound with animation was
Speaker 1: a huge leap forward in the nineteen twenties, Steamboat Willie
Speaker 1: being the first cartoon with sound, and Disney himself voiced
Speaker 1: the iconic character of Mickey Mouse, who struck a chord
Speaker 1: with viewers and propelled Disney into enormous success. Over the
Speaker 1: following decades, he would see a lot more success, including
Speaker 1: going into feature length animation which had not been done before,
Speaker 1: and he was able to uh succeed with snow White
Speaker 1: and the Seven Dwarves, and he also continued to see
Speaker 1: success with short form stuff. Now, depending upon the account
Speaker 1: you read, because there are a couple of different versions
Speaker 1: of the story, we actually begin either in France or
Speaker 1: the French Quarter in New Orleans. The story goes that
Speaker 1: Disney was on vacation with his family, and as he
Speaker 1: was on vacation, he decided to look into some uh
Speaker 1: some antique shops and he came across some various clockwork toys,
Speaker 1: like wind up birds and that sort of thing. One
Speaker 1: specific toy he came across in an antique shop was
Speaker 1: a bird cage that had a mechanical bird inside of
Speaker 1: it that would chirp and sing, and it would make
Speaker 1: little motions that you could describe as being somewhat robotic.
Speaker 1: They were pretty primitive motions, but you know, close enough
Speaker 1: to being an actual bird that you knew what it was.
Speaker 1: It was. It wasn't like it looked like a a
Speaker 1: monstrosity or anything like that. He thought it was absolutely charming,
Speaker 1: and he felt that there was a lot of potential
Speaker 1: there that he could use to create three dimensional physical
Speaker 1: animated figurines potentially and a theme park that was one
Speaker 1: of the things he had been considering around this time,
Speaker 1: although Disneyland had not yet become a reality. So he
Speaker 1: brought the antique bird cage with the mechanical bird inside
Speaker 1: of it back to his company and he went to
Speaker 1: some of his uh top thinkers over at the Walt
Speaker 1: Disney Company and said, figure out how this thing works.
Speaker 1: So they took it apart, and they took a look
Speaker 1: at it, and they began to formulate ideas of how
Speaker 1: they could create their own technology that would also allow
Speaker 1: for animation of this type sort of this automated puppetry
Speaker 1: that I was talking about now. Disney was really excited
Speaker 1: about this prospect of having fully realized, three dimensional characters
Speaker 1: capable of delivering a performance consistently. And Jack Gladish, who
Speaker 1: was one of the engineers who would work on developing
Speaker 1: audio animatronic technology, one of many, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: would say that Disney wants joked to him, I'm tired
Speaker 1: of finicky actors. I want to develop a fully animated,
Speaker 1: articulated human being to use in place of motion picture
Speaker 1: actors and actresses. So this was Disney having a bit
Speaker 1: of fun saying that, Hey, the real reason why I
Speaker 1: want to develop this technolog jeus because then I can
Speaker 1: get rid of all these pesky humans that keep on
Speaker 1: asking questions or having issues, whereas the animatronic ones will
Speaker 1: just do what we tell them to do. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny because there's another famous director who said
Speaker 1: something very similar about Disney's cast. That famous director was
Speaker 1: Alfred Hitchcock, who of course made incredible films of thriller
Speaker 1: and psychological horror genres, things like The Birds and Psycho,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. Alfred Hitchcock reportedly once said Disney
Speaker 1: has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor,
Speaker 1: he just tears him up. So Hitchcock's joke and Disney's
Speaker 1: joke were very similar in that respect, this idea of
Speaker 1: the frustrated director who has to contend with the delicate
Speaker 1: sensibilities of actors and actresses. But in truth, Disney just
Speaker 1: thought this was a really cool technology and he saw
Speaker 1: a lot of potential in it, and he was always
Speaker 1: looking at new ways to make use of the immense
Speaker 1: talent he had attracted to the Walt Disney Company. Whereas
Speaker 1: a lot of These people started off in the animation
Speaker 1: department where they were working on various films and shorts
Speaker 1: for Disney. They would eventually move into very different departments
Speaker 1: and develop stuff like the actual Disneyland theme park disney
Speaker 1: World later on, as well as visual effects and props
Speaker 1: and sets and things of that nature for the various
Speaker 1: live action films that Disney was getting into as well.
Speaker 1: So you had people who started off as animators kind
Speaker 1: of specializing in different areas. This was the dawn of
Speaker 1: the imagineering age. There was no such thing as an
Speaker 1: imagineer yet, no one had called it that, but eventually
Speaker 1: Disney would end up referring to people who worked in
Speaker 1: this sort of field as imagineers. They were thinking outside
Speaker 1: the box. You using engineering and creativity married together to
Speaker 1: create really interesting experiences that you could not find anywhere else.
Speaker 1: That was the value that Disney wanted to create to
Speaker 1: justify charging people admission to come and check it out.
Speaker 1: So he was really excited about this potential opportunity, and
Speaker 1: he had a lot of potential ways of using this
Speaker 1: technology already at this time. He was he was thinking ahead.
Speaker 1: One of those was the fact that he wanted to
Speaker 1: open up an amusement park that would eventually become Disneyland.
Speaker 1: He thought, well, I need to have attractions for people
Speaker 1: to come and experience at this park, and he thought
Speaker 1: this technology could potentially provide some of those experiences. He
Speaker 1: also had an ability to contribute to a massive event
Speaker 1: that would happen in the mid nineteen sixties, that is,
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty four World's Fair in New York that
Speaker 1: was going to end up requiring a lot of work
Speaker 1: on Disney's part. Years in advance, he knew that he
Speaker 1: was going to be providing for attractions for this World's Fair,
Speaker 1: and he knew that the entire attention of the world
Speaker 1: was going to be on New York for this event.
Speaker 1: So he wanted to make absolutely certain that the attractions
Speaker 1: that his company designed were phenomenal and unlike anything anyone
Speaker 1: had ever experienced. And for that he needed to pioneer
Speaker 1: a new technology. So all he had to do from
Speaker 1: that point forward it was just invented, No big shakes, right,
Speaker 1: So to start. One of the earliest experiments with this
Speaker 1: idea of animating a three dimensional figure was what would
Speaker 1: eventually be called the Dancing Man or the Little Man project.
Speaker 1: This would be of a figure that measured about nine
Speaker 1: inches tall and was meant to dance based upon this
Speaker 1: automated system, or mechanical system at least if not fully automated.
Speaker 1: The story goes that Walt Disney approached the artist Ken Anderson,
Speaker 1: who was working for Disney. Anderson would become instrumental for
Speaker 1: the design and implementation of various elements in Disneyland, and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, you know what, You're working on
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, but I wanna I want to
Speaker 1: pay you out of my own pocket for a project
Speaker 1: that I really believe in that's not really a company
Speaker 1: project yet. I want to create scenes that evoke the
Speaker 1: American way of life. And Disney had a very idyllic
Speaker 1: sense of what that meant. That small town feel that
Speaker 1: you get when you walk down Main Street, USA. If
Speaker 1: you're ever at Disneyland or disney World and you're walking
Speaker 1: down Main Street, especially if you're doing it at a
Speaker 1: time when there's not a huge crowd there, it evokes
Speaker 1: the sense of a small town maybe early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: around the time when Walt Disney himself would have been
Speaker 1: growing up, where things appeared to be simple and elegant.
Speaker 1: That's what Disney wanted to create, and so he talked
Speaker 1: to Anderson, said, I want to have this idea of
Speaker 1: building this kind of experience in miniature where people can
Speaker 1: look at the different manatures we design and different elements
Speaker 1: of it actually come to life. So at first he
Speaker 1: wanted to get some paintings, some sketches of this. So
Speaker 1: Anderson got to work and one of the first things
Speaker 1: he created was a Norman Rockwell esque scene of a
Speaker 1: soft shoe dancer performing on a stage, a small stage,
Speaker 1: so something that you might see in an old Vaudevillian theater,
Speaker 1: and Disney immediately connected to it. He thought, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I wanted to see. And he felt that this
Speaker 1: was a figure that if they could create a three
Speaker 1: dimensional version of it and build it in a miniature
Speaker 1: set and it could move around and do its little
Speaker 1: dance routine for people, that would be phenomenal. So he
Speaker 1: took Anderson's design, and he then decided to UH to
Speaker 1: work with a couple of other folks over at Disney.
Speaker 1: He UH went to a sculptor who was working for
Speaker 1: the company at the time. As a sculptor's name was
Speaker 1: Charles Clarence Christodoro and Christodorro's dad was a famous agricultural
Speaker 1: scientist and farmer who had written extensively about agriculture. Christodorro
Speaker 1: himself had become a notable sculptor, working both in the
Speaker 1: public spaces, designing statues that were shown in San Diego
Speaker 1: and other areas of California, and also working in the
Speaker 1: movie industry. He had worked for Disney once during the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, left the company, and then came back in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen fIF these. He was given the sketch
Speaker 1: and told to make a physical model of the dancer,
Speaker 1: which he did. He sculpted a physical model based upon
Speaker 1: the the Ken Anderson painting and gave that to Disney.
Speaker 1: Disney then took the model over to the machine shop,
Speaker 1: and he also brought in the animation department. Now, right
Speaker 1: now seems like it would be a good time to
Speaker 1: summarize all the areas that came together to make audio
Speaker 1: animatronics even possible. And I realized I haven't even gotten
Speaker 1: to what audio animatronics can do and how they do it.
Speaker 1: But it's important to understand the different departments to kind
Speaker 1: of get a grip on why it was so complicated
Speaker 1: and why it called for a multidisciplinary approach, because that's
Speaker 1: exactly what audio animatronics were. It required people of vastly
Speaker 1: different disciplines and knowledge base in order to make this happen. So,
Speaker 1: in no particular order, here are some of the departments
Speaker 1: at Disney that worked on pioneering audio animatronics. First, there
Speaker 1: was the Sound Department. Now it might seem weird that
Speaker 1: I'm starting with the sound department instead of the Mechanical
Speaker 1: Shop or animation, but the reason for that is the
Speaker 1: Sound department was in charge of the audio animatronic projects
Speaker 1: because those depended so heavily on that audio component. I'll
Speaker 1: explain more about how in a little bit. The Sound
Speaker 1: department was ultimately the one that was holding onto the project,
Speaker 1: the project leader that was the head of development. This
Speaker 1: would end up actually causing some issues later on. There
Speaker 1: would be some disagreements between the Sound Department and some
Speaker 1: other departments, and they were run by different unions, which
Speaker 1: also meant that they would run into these weird problems.
Speaker 1: There was a story in one of the articles I
Speaker 1: read about how the mechanical department, the Mechanic Shop, they
Speaker 1: might be working on an audio animatronic figure and they
Speaker 1: would need to disconnect it so that they can make
Speaker 1: an adjustment before reconnecting it. But they weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: actually disconnect the figure because that was a union job
Speaker 1: that one of the sound department guys would have to do.
Speaker 1: So they'd have to go and get someone from the
Speaker 1: sound department to come over to the machine shop disconnect
Speaker 1: a tube, wait until the mechanical shop people had made
Speaker 1: their adjustments, reconnect the tube, and then they could proceed.
Speaker 1: By union rules, the machine shop folks were not allowed
Speaker 1: to do that on their own, so it got very
Speaker 1: frustrating at times. Then you've got the Animation Department Disney,
Speaker 1: of course famous for animation. This was the group of
Speaker 1: artists who had studied movement extensively. If you're going to
Speaker 1: animate movement, you have to understand how movement works, or
Speaker 1: else you can't replicate it properly and it's not going
Speaker 1: to look right when you watch an animated film. And
Speaker 1: more importantly, they had been studying animated movement in film itself.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, film or at least magnetic tape,
Speaker 1: would become incredibly important with audio animatronics. They leverage their
Speaker 1: expertise to help design not just the physical objects that
Speaker 1: would be animated and the actual motions those objects would make,
Speaker 1: but also the very technique for programming the objects, and
Speaker 1: i'll explain more about that in a little bit. Then
Speaker 1: you had the modeling department. These were the people who
Speaker 1: would make three dimensional models and sculptures of the various
Speaker 1: components that you wanted so that other departments could use
Speaker 1: that as a reference. And then you had the machine shop.
Speaker 1: The machine department had to fabricate all the physical pieces
Speaker 1: that would be used in these various figures, and then
Speaker 1: you also had props and costumes that would end up
Speaker 1: outfitting these different figures. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different moving parts, both metaphorically and literally, as it turns
Speaker 1: out when you get to audio animatronics, in order to
Speaker 1: make it possible, and all of those groups had their
Speaker 1: own leaders and their own priorities, but the fact that
Speaker 1: they were able to collaborate and create a system as
Speaker 1: intricate as audio animatronics is pretty amazing all on its own.
Speaker 1: And we haven't even gotten to the technology yet. So
Speaker 1: I want to get to that technology, and I will
Speaker 1: in just a moment, but first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and thank our sponsor all right. So you got
Speaker 1: the machine shop and they were creating the Dancing Man
Speaker 1: or the Little Man, and Disney decided that he needed
Speaker 1: to have someone in charge of figuring out the animation
Speaker 1: for this, like figuring out what moves would need to
Speaker 1: be animated, so he tapped a guy named Waffle Rogers
Speaker 1: to work on the animation for it Now. Rogers was
Speaker 1: born in Stratton, Colorado, in nine and he was a
Speaker 1: sculptor and engineer. He attended an art institute in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and was recruited directly out of school to the
Speaker 1: Walt Disney Studios in nineteen thirty nine. He worked as
Speaker 1: an animator on films like Pinocchio and Bambi. During World
Speaker 1: War Two, he took leave of the Disney Company and
Speaker 1: served in the United States Marine Corps as a staff
Speaker 1: sergeant in the photographic section. And when he wasn't animating,
Speaker 1: he was tinkering. He was creating toys and model trains,
Speaker 1: and Walt Disney was also a model train fanatic. He
Speaker 1: loved model trains, including trains large enough to ride on,
Speaker 1: and he had a couple at his at his property,
Speaker 1: like he had a private little railroad track because he
Speaker 1: just loved trains, and he loved that romantic image of
Speaker 1: travel by train. Um a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: Disney worked on he worked on while he was traveling
Speaker 1: via train, So he and Rogers had a lot of
Speaker 1: common ground there. And Disney thought that Rogers had a
Speaker 1: lot of potential to work on actual physical implementations, not
Speaker 1: just animation, so he began to rely on Rogers to
Speaker 1: sculpt objects for live action pictures, and in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four he tapped Rodgers to help design buildings for Disneyland,
Speaker 1: so Rogers went from animator to kind of almost like
Speaker 1: an architect. Rogers would also become a chief contributor to
Speaker 1: this audio animatronics project. In fact, some would argue that
Speaker 1: he was, essentially, when you got down to it, the
Speaker 1: lead audio animatronic engineer. He is also immortalized by the
Speaker 1: way at Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction. You can find his
Speaker 1: tombstone there. One of the tombstones has a name that
Speaker 1: is a and homage to him. It was created while
Speaker 1: he was still alive. Uh. The tombstone reads, here rests Wattle,
Speaker 1: our bender. He rode to Glory on a fender peaceful.
Speaker 1: So what his actual name was Rogers, not Bender. That's
Speaker 1: in honor of him now as a reference. Disney decided
Speaker 1: to bring in an actor to actually perform a soft
Speaker 1: shoe routine, and they were going to shoot this actor
Speaker 1: with film film cameras, not actually shoot the actor, even
Speaker 1: Disney would not do something so brazen as that, but
Speaker 1: rather to film the actor as he was doing the
Speaker 1: soft shoe routine against a background that was a grid,
Speaker 1: so that the animators could review the footage, use the
Speaker 1: grid as reference points, watch every little motion, and try
Speaker 1: and figure out how they were going to translate that
Speaker 1: into animation when they built this system that they were
Speaker 1: working on. The actor that they got, by the way,
Speaker 1: was Buddy Epson, who was originally going to play the
Speaker 1: role of the Tin Man in the nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz masterpiece, but Ebson ended up having a
Speaker 1: massive allergic reaction to the aluminum makeup that was used
Speaker 1: for the Tin Woodsman, and so he would end up
Speaker 1: being replaced by Jack Haley. However, you can actually still
Speaker 1: hear Ebsen's voice in the Wizard of Oz. Uh it's
Speaker 1: his voice in the song We're off to see the
Speaker 1: Wizard that Dorothy Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman sing after
Speaker 1: they've rescued the Tin Woodsman, so that that bit where
Speaker 1: there skipping off into the distance. The voice you hear
Speaker 1: is not Jack Hayley's, it's Buddy Ebsen. Uh. He also,
Speaker 1: by the way, played Jed clamp It in The Beverly Hillbillies,
Speaker 1: so if you ever watched that television series, he was
Speaker 1: Jed clamp It. Ebsen was a song and dance man
Speaker 1: back in the day, so it was a natural choice
Speaker 1: for Disney to bring him on. He would end up
Speaker 1: working on several Disney UH initiatives, including hum Davy Crockett,
Speaker 1: but for this he just got up. He did a
Speaker 1: soft shoe routine. They took several takes of it, and
Speaker 1: they used that to be their reference that the animators
Speaker 1: could use and that the machine shop could use to
Speaker 1: make sure that the pieces they designed would be capable
Speaker 1: of replicating all the different motions that would be necessary. Now,
Speaker 1: ideally you would be able to create pieces that did
Speaker 1: exactly what you needed and nothing else. Because if you
Speaker 1: design a figure to do moves that it doesn't need
Speaker 1: to replicate, that's time you wasted on that effort. Because
Speaker 1: no one's ever going to see it, so ideally you
Speaker 1: figure out exactly what you need and you designed for
Speaker 1: that specifically. Now, one of the mechanical engineers who was
Speaker 1: working on this project was Roger Edward Braggy technically Rogert E. Braggy, Sr.
Speaker 1: His son was also working for Disney and would become
Speaker 1: an imagineer. Braggy had moved to California from Chicago in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen twenties with experience in machine shop training.
Speaker 1: He joined Disney in nineteen nine, so he was originally
Speaker 1: working on some of their live action films. He helped
Speaker 1: design special effects for twenty thousand leagues under this see
Speaker 1: he also helped Walt Disney build some of those model
Speaker 1: trains for his personal collection, and Broggy was one of
Speaker 1: the engineers working on this Dancing Man project. He would
Speaker 1: later say that was a huge challenge in part because Ebsen,
Speaker 1: when he did his soft shoe routine for the cameras,
Speaker 1: never repeated movements in the routine. So all the movements
Speaker 1: he did were original and not patterned. They weren't repetition,
Speaker 1: and that's difficult if you're an animator. You would like
Speaker 1: to have that repetition because you can design it once
Speaker 1: and then essentially cut and paste it and use it again.
Speaker 1: But if everything is new, then you have to design
Speaker 1: it from scratch all the way through. It made their
Speaker 1: job more difficult. Ultimately, they produced this nine inch tall
Speaker 1: figure and they used cables to attach to various points
Speaker 1: on the figure. And this was controlled by external machinery.
Speaker 1: So you would have one amounts to a very complex
Speaker 1: gearbox that used cams and cables in order to control
Speaker 1: the figure. Now, a cam in case you don't know
Speaker 1: what that term is, it's a rotating or sliding piece
Speaker 1: of machinery, particularly used to transform rotary motion into linear
Speaker 1: motion or vice versa. So in other words, you can
Speaker 1: turn a rotational motion into a back and forth or
Speaker 1: up and down motion a linear one using these, or
Speaker 1: you can use a linear motion to create a rotational motion.
Speaker 1: If you have heard the term camshaft in vehicles, that's
Speaker 1: what a camshaft does. Uh. This was not yet an
Speaker 1: example of audio animatronics. This figure, it didn't quite work
Speaker 1: on a full audio animatronic system, but it did help
Speaker 1: plot the course for the next innovation. And Disney, not
Speaker 1: satisfied with creating this nine inch tall figure, wanted to
Speaker 1: create something more complicated. His next thought was a barbershop quartet,
Speaker 1: a little chanical barbershop quartet that could move and dance
Speaker 1: and sing. He wanted to sing Sweet add a line.
Speaker 1: But the system that the machine shop had created wasn't
Speaker 1: really sufficient because the dancing figure couldn't make very subtle movements.
Speaker 1: It was all because all or nothing really. With each
Speaker 1: of the movements this thing made, it jerked around a lot,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't really a lifelike representation. The mechanism that
Speaker 1: controlled the figure had to be within a couple of
Speaker 1: feet of it, So this gearbox essentially had to be
Speaker 1: really close to the dancing figure. Uh, which meant that
Speaker 1: you had spatial issues you had to take into accounts.
Speaker 1: So Disney's original thought was this could be an attraction
Speaker 1: where maybe you walk up to a cabinet, you plunk
Speaker 1: a quarter in, a little curtain draws back, and you
Speaker 1: see this dancing figure dance for a quarter, and then
Speaker 1: once it's done, the curtain draws close and you move on.
Speaker 1: But the mechanic said, well, here's the problem. The amount
Speaker 1: of money it took to develop this and the amount
Speaker 1: of money it will take to maintain it. You will
Speaker 1: never recapture by going a quarter of you. Cents of
Speaker 1: you is not going to cut it, and you can't
Speaker 1: really go more expensive than that because at the time
Speaker 1: cents was, you know, not insignificant amount of money. And
Speaker 1: keep in mind, this is the nineteen fifties, so these
Speaker 1: initial attempts to create an animated figure in real life
Speaker 1: had kind of stalled out, but plans for Disneyland were
Speaker 1: continuing at the same time. The park opened in July
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, but the first attraction to use audio
Speaker 1: animatronics would follow in five years. That was a ride
Speaker 1: called the Mind Train through Nature's Wonderland, which opened in
Speaker 1: May nineteen sixty. And this was able to take advantage
Speaker 1: of something that some of the engineers had noticed. They said,
Speaker 1: you know, these small figures, they require all these cams
Speaker 1: and cables and everything has to be external. We have
Speaker 1: to build the actual power system outside of the figure,
Speaker 1: so you've always got to figure out how to mask
Speaker 1: all the cables that are running up to the figure.
Speaker 1: If we make the figures larger life size, then we
Speaker 1: can store a lot of these mechanical components inside the
Speaker 1: figures themselves. It won't have to be externally controlled. You
Speaker 1: could actually build these figures that they have the internal parts,
Speaker 1: and that's so you have a lot more freedom to
Speaker 1: stage them the way you want to. And this really
Speaker 1: appealed to Disney. So one of the first implementations they
Speaker 1: had was this Mind Train through Nature's Wonderland. Now that
Speaker 1: ride might sound unfamiliar to you if you've been to
Speaker 1: Disneyland and you're wondering where the Mind Trained through Nature's
Speaker 1: Wonderland ride is. Well, it used to be where Big
Speaker 1: Thunder Mountain is now, so Big Thunder Mountain is a
Speaker 1: totally different kind of train ride. The Mind Train through
Speaker 1: Nature's Wonderland was a slow moving ride that puts you
Speaker 1: through various scenes that were inspired by the West Stern
Speaker 1: United States of America. It was kind of the Western
Speaker 1: version of Jungle Cruise. So if you've ever been on
Speaker 1: the Jungle Cruise, that's a boat ride where you go
Speaker 1: through areas have been inspired by India and Africa. The
Speaker 1: Nature's Wonderland was similar, except it was a train ride
Speaker 1: through the Western US inspired areas and included things like
Speaker 1: bears playing around in a pond. Now, that was the
Speaker 1: first attraction to feature audio animatronics, and I guess now
Speaker 1: as good a time as any as to explain what
Speaker 1: audio animatronics are. Audio animatronics take on these mechanical figures
Speaker 1: that you can power in various ways, and they pair
Speaker 1: it with a system that is programmable that uses audio
Speaker 1: as its method of transmitting information and taking the information
Speaker 1: and turning it into action. So everything is based off sound,
Speaker 1: which is kind of weird to think about it, but
Speaker 1: you would store the information on these massive cassettes, these
Speaker 1: magnetic tapes. Really they're magnetic reels. They weren't really cassettes.
Speaker 1: So you take magnetic reels of tape and you would
Speaker 1: encode information in sound on the tape, and when you
Speaker 1: played it back, that's what would create the uh, it's
Speaker 1: what would allow circuits to be completed to create the movement.
Speaker 1: You see now, how that all works, It requires a
Speaker 1: bit more of a deeper dive. First of all, the
Speaker 1: earliest audio animatronic systems were digital. Now by that, I
Speaker 1: don't mean they were computer systems. This is purely mechanical approach.
Speaker 1: It's not electronic, it's not uh, you know, there's no
Speaker 1: microprocessors or transistors. It's all mechanical elements. But it is
Speaker 1: digital in the sense that it's binary and that you
Speaker 1: have two positions, you have on and off. That meant
Speaker 1: that any emotion you wanted to make had only two
Speaker 1: outcomes arrest position, which would be whatever it started off as.
Speaker 1: So let's take let's say that it's a human figure
Speaker 1: that you're trying to animate, and one of your animations
Speaker 1: is your human figure needs to turn her head to
Speaker 1: the left, So in the off position, in the rest position,
Speaker 1: she's just staring straight forward and isn't moving. When you
Speaker 1: activate a circuit, then she moves her head to the left,
Speaker 1: but she can't halfway move her head to the left.
Speaker 1: She can't move it a quarter of the way. It's
Speaker 1: either all the way to the left, as far as
Speaker 1: her freedom of movement allows, or it's in the that
Speaker 1: rest position. That's it, those two positions on or off,
Speaker 1: zero or one. That's why we call it digital. This
Speaker 1: was a little primitive. It limited what the animators could do.
Speaker 1: They could not put in subtle movements, so it was
Speaker 1: good for certain types of audio animatronics early on, but
Speaker 1: it had limited use. It also was limited in how
Speaker 1: much force it could use. That these original audio animatronics
Speaker 1: used one of two different systems to create movement. Either
Speaker 1: it was using pneumatics or it was using solenoids. A
Speaker 1: pneumatic system uses compressed air. Compressed air is what creates
Speaker 1: the force that translates into mechanical motion in your system.
Speaker 1: So you would have tubes, pneumatic tubes that would move
Speaker 1: through this figure. You would have them, you know, wherever
Speaker 1: they needed to be, and you would have valves that
Speaker 1: when they're closed, do not allow air to move through.
Speaker 1: When you would complete a circuit, it would make the
Speaker 1: valve open, which would allow air to move through, which
Speaker 1: would then create the mechanical force necessary to make the
Speaker 1: figure move whichever way you wanted it to. So let's
Speaker 1: say it's a bird in the enchanted Tiki Room, which
Speaker 1: was one of the earliest audio animatronic attractions outside of
Speaker 1: Nature's Wonderland and still exists to this day. The pneumatics
Speaker 1: would allow the mouth to open. The closed position would
Speaker 1: be the rest position, and it would allow the mouth
Speaker 1: to open up. And when you do a lot of
Speaker 1: opening and closing, it gives the illusion that the bird
Speaker 1: is actually talking when you pair it with the appropriate sound.
Speaker 1: That was one way of creating motion, But the solenoids
Speaker 1: were a different way that was also being used in
Speaker 1: this digital system. Solenoids are a variation on electro magnets.
Speaker 1: So those of you who have listened to me talk
Speaker 1: endlessly about electromagnetism, get ready for some more so. Your
Speaker 1: basic electromagnet consists of a coil of conductive material. Often
Speaker 1: it is insulated copper wire. You run a current through
Speaker 1: this coil and that generates a magnetic field. The magnetic
Speaker 1: field can then be used to attract any sort of
Speaker 1: Faro magnetic material. That's the case of a solenoid, where
Speaker 1: you have a core that connect kind of like a piston.
Speaker 1: So when it's in his rest position, the core is
Speaker 1: outside of the cylinder. May his positioned right at the
Speaker 1: very end, so the cylinder is big enough so that
Speaker 1: the core can fit completely inside the cylinder. And when
Speaker 1: you run a current through the coil, it generates a
Speaker 1: magnetic field which attracts the faro magnetic core into the cylinder,
Speaker 1: pulls it in. And if you connect something to the
Speaker 1: other end of that little core, like a cable, that
Speaker 1: then attaches to a piece on a larger animatronic figure,
Speaker 1: like let's say a mouth of a character. Whenever the
Speaker 1: circuit activates will pull the solenoid in the core into
Speaker 1: the solenoid, which in turn pulls on the wire or
Speaker 1: cable which is attached to whatever body part the mouth
Speaker 1: let's say of Mr. Lincoln, and pull pulls it down,
Speaker 1: pulls it open, and then by turning off the electricity
Speaker 1: to this coil, it negates that magnetic field. It returns
Speaker 1: to rest position, and Lincoln shuts his trap. And thus,
Speaker 1: by controlling the the flow of electricity through the solenoid,
Speaker 1: you can open and close the mouth of one of
Speaker 1: the greatest presidents of United States history, and thus magnificence
Speaker 1: is born. I mean, this was a an enormous use
Speaker 1: of technology, a very innovative use of technology at the time.
Speaker 1: So that was the basics for the movement, but that
Speaker 1: we still haven't talked about the audio part. That's kind
Speaker 1: of more the animatronic part, the idea of this animated
Speaker 1: physical being. But whether it was a bird or a president,
Speaker 1: or a hippopotamus or whatever it might be that was
Speaker 1: using audio animatronics, the secret sauce was in that audio.
Speaker 1: They found that what they could do is create a
Speaker 1: tone on a cassette or on a magnetic reel, I
Speaker 1: should say, they could create a tone, and they used
Speaker 1: these little metal reads that would connect to circuits. When
Speaker 1: the reds would vibrate, it would close the circuit and
Speaker 1: allow a current to pass through. So if you made
Speaker 1: the reds vibrate, it would create a physical circuit that
Speaker 1: would end up making the pneumatic or solenoid system activate
Speaker 1: and thus be either on or off. You know, well
Speaker 1: on really, and once it stopped activating, it would be off.
Speaker 1: You could have your character open his or her mouth
Speaker 1: or move his or her head, or whatever the action
Speaker 1: need it to be. And the reason the way they
Speaker 1: would make it vibrate is they would use a resonant frequency.
Speaker 1: So resonant frequencies are the natural vibrating frequency of any
Speaker 1: given material. If you have a glass and you tap
Speaker 1: the glass and it makes a little ringing noise, that
Speaker 1: is its resonant frequency, and if you're able to replicate
Speaker 1: that resonant frequency, then you will make the glass vibrate
Speaker 1: just by exposing it to that frequency. So if you
Speaker 1: create a sound that is of the same pitch as
Speaker 1: an object's resonant frequency, it will naturally begin to vibrate.
Speaker 1: And if you then amplify that signal. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you increase the volume, you will increase the amount
Speaker 1: of vibration that you're creating in that material. So again
Speaker 1: with the example of a glass, if you have a
Speaker 1: crystal glass, then it generates a particular tone when you
Speaker 1: strike it. If you replicate that tone and you amplify
Speaker 1: the signal enough, you can make the glass vibrate an
Speaker 1: enough so that it shatters. This is what we see
Speaker 1: when opera singers replicate a particular note and they try
Speaker 1: and shatter a glass. Some people can do it, but
Speaker 1: it all depends on the glass. It all depends on
Speaker 1: the person's range and how how pitch perfect they are
Speaker 1: and creating that particular frequency. It has to be close enough.
Speaker 1: There's actually a small range where it will work, but
Speaker 1: you need to be as close as possible to really
Speaker 1: get the maximum effect. It's a it's much easier to
Speaker 1: do with amplification than it is unamplified. But that's the
Speaker 1: basis for audio animatronics. They had these little metallic reads
Speaker 1: that would be connected to the various circuitry, and each
Speaker 1: one would have its own specific resonant frequency. When you
Speaker 1: played the magnetic tape back it would play tones at
Speaker 1: that resonant frequency for whichever particular action it needed, That
Speaker 1: specific metallic read would start to vibrate. Close that specific circuit,
Speaker 1: and then you get the motion. So if it's a
Speaker 1: figure that has several motions associated with it, let's say
Speaker 1: it's a bird that can turn its head, flap its wings,
Speaker 1: or open its mouth. That's three different motions. That means
Speaker 1: you would have three different circuits with three different metallic reads,
Speaker 1: with three different resonant frequencies. So that way you could
Speaker 1: produce different tones and make the specific outcome that you wanted. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: every time you generated a tone, everything would go off
Speaker 1: and you would have chaos. More on that in a
Speaker 1: little bit. Again, this is a digital system, so there's
Speaker 1: no variation here. You could not have the bird turn
Speaker 1: its head halfway. It's always going to turn it as
Speaker 1: far as the animatronic is allowed. Whatever it's freedom of
Speaker 1: movement is, that's where it's going to go to. So
Speaker 1: it's still had limitations. However, by creating a specific circuit
Speaker 1: for every single motion, you could make a pretty sophisticated figure.
Speaker 1: The individual motions were pretty primitive, but collectively it could
Speaker 1: be very sophisticated, It did require a lot of work,
Speaker 1: and it required a lot of cheating, I guess is
Speaker 1: the right way of putting it. So. For example, one
Speaker 1: of the figures that Disney was working on for the
Speaker 1: New York World's Fair was Abraham Lincoln, and in order
Speaker 1: to make all the different motions of the face the
Speaker 1: way they wanted to UH, they had to put in
Speaker 1: more components than could fit within the constraint of a
Speaker 1: human head, and they weren't They didn't really have the
Speaker 1: option of scaling it up. They couldn't build Lincoln larger
Speaker 1: than human sized and get the effect they wanted. They
Speaker 1: wanted to keep Lincoln at the dimensions that they felt
Speaker 1: were important for him to get the feeling across that
Speaker 1: they wanted to make. So they had to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: how can we fit all these components inside a human
Speaker 1: head when they're larger than what the space can contain.
Speaker 1: And eventually they were able to make a head that
Speaker 1: had kind of a bulge in the back of it,
Speaker 1: and they were able to fake it with the wig
Speaker 1: that they put on Mr. Lincoln. Although apparently, and at
Speaker 1: least some of the wigs that they designed for the
Speaker 1: character UH, the bulge in the back of the head
Speaker 1: was noticeable. So, considering Lincoln's fate, that might have been
Speaker 1: viewed as being tasteless, but they were working within the
Speaker 1: constraints of a very new technology. Now I mentioned that
Speaker 1: this approach had its limitations that you could only be
Speaker 1: on or off, and that they needed to have something
Speaker 1: with a little bit more of a spectrum of outcomes
Speaker 1: in order to get the effect that they really wanted.
Speaker 1: That approach required them to switch from pneumatic and solenoid
Speaker 1: systems to hydraulic systems. Hydraulic system uses liquid. Typically it's
Speaker 1: just water as its means of creating that same sort
Speaker 1: of mechanical force. You can't really compress water, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, so if you just put force behind water,
Speaker 1: it will push again whatever constraints you have it in.
Speaker 1: So if you put a good amount of water pressure
Speaker 1: in and you use valves to control where that water
Speaker 1: can go by opening and closing those valves, you can
Speaker 1: allow for some pretty powerful movements, including stuff that's strong
Speaker 1: enough to do something like lift and arm. Because the
Speaker 1: various pieces of machinery that Disney engineers were creating, they
Speaker 1: weighed a good amount of they had a good amount
Speaker 1: of weight to him, a good amount of mass to them,
Speaker 1: and pneumatic ability on pneumatic systems weren't strong enough to
Speaker 1: move them, especially not smoothly. If you want to build
Speaker 1: a compressed air system that can move a significant amount
Speaker 1: of weight, chances are you're going to end up with
Speaker 1: an air catapult, which was not exactly what Disney was
Speaker 1: hoping for when he was thinking of these different designs.
Speaker 1: So imagineers switched to these hydraulic systems UH, and it
Speaker 1: also meant that they wanted to create more gradations of movement.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to just be on and off in
Speaker 1: just want to be open and closed, or left or right.
Speaker 1: They wanted to have some different abilities. They wanted to
Speaker 1: create a lot of different potential movements within the limbs
Speaker 1: of characters. One of the UH exhibits that they were
Speaker 1: working on for the New York World's Fair was the
Speaker 1: Carousel of Progress, which you can still see in certain
Speaker 1: Disney parks. The Carousel Progress features multiple scenes of a
Speaker 1: family through different eras of human history, including near future,
Speaker 1: where you get to see the innovation of progress, how
Speaker 1: systems have improved over time to make our lives more
Speaker 1: convenient and enjoyable, and all of these various exhibits a
Speaker 1: New York had different sponsors, so Disney was partnering with
Speaker 1: other companies that had a vested interest in the public
Speaker 1: seeing this stuff. So there were branded materials inside Carousel
Speaker 1: of Progress so that people would say, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: I need to buy X kind of refrigerator because I
Speaker 1: want my life to be as convenient as it was
Speaker 1: for those robots we just saw. So in order to
Speaker 1: make this look convincing, they wanted the human characters to
Speaker 1: have very lifelike motions. Well, you can't do that with
Speaker 1: just the digital system, so they needed to go with
Speaker 1: an analog system. Analog means that you can have a
Speaker 1: variable element. It's not just on or off. That's what
Speaker 1: digital is. Either the signals going or it's not. Variable
Speaker 1: means you can actually create variations, and you do this
Speaker 1: through voltage. By changing the amount of voltage in a
Speaker 1: system and by increasing it or decreasing it, you could
Speaker 1: create different ranges of motion within a properly designed system.
Speaker 1: So that's what the imagineers started working on with both
Speaker 1: Link and the Caresel Progress. They wanted to create more
Speaker 1: sophisticated systems that would allow for this sort of realistic motion,
Speaker 1: and by pairing the hydraulic systems with this analog voltage system,
Speaker 1: they could then create a more natural movement. Now, in
Speaker 1: order to encode that, they had to use varying tones
Speaker 1: on this magnetic tape, and to do that, they ended
Speaker 1: up having to use multiple tracks on a single piece
Speaker 1: of magnetic tape in order to conserve space, because otherwise
Speaker 1: you would have to have a real for every single
Speaker 1: component that is controlled by some sort of hydraulic system,
Speaker 1: and that's just not feasible. So they ended up creating
Speaker 1: multi track systems where they could record I think up
Speaker 1: to twenty four are eventually different tracks. But not all
Speaker 1: of those tracks were for the actual animatronic figures. Some
Speaker 1: of them were for theatrical elements like lighting queues, or
Speaker 1: whether or not certain uh like products would open, like
Speaker 1: the refrigerator door might open, a drawer might slide out,
Speaker 1: an element in the fridge might tilt so people can
Speaker 1: get a better look at it. All of those were
Speaker 1: their own separate little circuits, and they all needed to
Speaker 1: be programmed into the audio animatronic reels, which again we're
Speaker 1: still using tones. So the sound department was still heavily
Speaker 1: involved in this. As you can imagine this complicated thing
Speaker 1: significantly once they got to the part where it was
Speaker 1: time to program the carousel of Progress and the great
Speaker 1: Moments with Mr Lincoln, and I'll explain how some of
Speaker 1: that turned out in just a minute, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break and thank our sponsor. So when
Speaker 1: we talk about programming this system where you've got all
Speaker 1: these different tracks that control these different elements within an
Speaker 1: animatronic UH system, keep in mind that depending on how
Speaker 1: many figures you have, and how many points of articulation
Speaker 1: they have and what they need to do, these could
Speaker 1: be incredibly complicated. From a macro standpoint, each individual figure
Speaker 1: might be fairly simple, but taken as a as a whole,
Speaker 1: it gets to be enormously complex. One of the earliest
Speaker 1: ways that they experimented with programming was using silver paint.
Speaker 1: They use these old Moviola movie editors that were designed
Speaker 1: to edit film, but instead of that, what they did
Speaker 1: was they took this this tape and they would paint
Speaker 1: silver lines on it to create a circuit, and whenever
Speaker 1: the reading head would pass over the silver it would
Speaker 1: create UH an electrical circuit that then would send out
Speaker 1: as a command for the various action to happen. So
Speaker 1: let's say again that it's a parent opening its beak,
Speaker 1: and you would use a little line of silver paint
Speaker 1: along the length of this tape to indicate this is
Speaker 1: where the beak needs to be opened. Because they were
Speaker 1: using animators to design the system, in part, the animators
Speaker 1: loved it. They were using it very similar to the
Speaker 1: way they would edit animation reels. With animation, you think
Speaker 1: of the work in terms of feet, not necessarily in seconds.
Speaker 1: So instead of saying, oh I need this mouth to
Speaker 1: be opened for two seconds, you might say, oh, I
Speaker 1: need this to happen for two ft of film. So
Speaker 1: you would literally mark out the spot on the tape
Speaker 1: where the action needed to start, and you would mark
Speaker 1: out the spawn the tape where the action needed to stop,
Speaker 1: and you would just connect those two points with some
Speaker 1: silver paint, and then when it would read through the system,
Speaker 1: it would play back that way. When it would hit
Speaker 1: that point in the tape, the action would happen. So
Speaker 1: as long as you either had all of your tracks
Speaker 1: on one tape, and they could do up to six
Speaker 1: tracks on this method. This was just the prototype method.
Speaker 1: If you had six different sets of actions, all on
Speaker 1: their each individual lines. You had six contacts that could
Speaker 1: create the different circuits. Then you could program up to
Speaker 1: six different components of your audio animatronic scene using one
Speaker 1: reel of tape, and they'd all be synchronized because you
Speaker 1: would just measure it out on the physical tape and
Speaker 1: draw where you needed the elements to happen. So maybe
Speaker 1: you'd say, all right, well, in three seconds in I
Speaker 1: need the bird to flap its wings, and at second
Speaker 1: number four I needed to start talking. But by second
Speaker 1: number five and he had to stop flapping its wings.
Speaker 1: But it keeps talking on and off until second number ten. Well,
Speaker 1: that's how you would mark it out on your magnetic tape,
Speaker 1: and you would just draw one line to be the
Speaker 1: control for the beak and another line to be the
Speaker 1: control for the wings, and as it would move through
Speaker 1: the Moviola editor and the contacts that the engineers that
Speaker 1: essentially added into this Moviola editor, it would play it
Speaker 1: back the same way every time. Now, this was not
Speaker 1: the system that Disney decided to use for everything. They
Speaker 1: again switched to an audio tone format instead of using
Speaker 1: lines of silver paint, the reason being that you could
Speaker 1: only play the tape so many times before the silver
Speaker 1: paint started to flake off, and once it started to
Speaker 1: flake off, then you no longer had a strong signal.
Speaker 1: You never didn't necessarily have the circuit completing anymore, and
Speaker 1: so you would get jitter emotions, or sometimes enough paint
Speaker 1: would peel off where you wouldn't even get the result
Speaker 1: you wanted at all. So it wasn't a permanent solution,
Speaker 1: but it was an interesting step towards what they needed.
Speaker 1: When they went with the tones, they found that that
Speaker 1: was a better approach. But as they started programming the
Speaker 1: Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, they started to run into
Speaker 1: some serious issues. The way they did this is they
Speaker 1: had editing machines and had playback machines. The playback machines
Speaker 1: all they could do was play the magnetic tape back again,
Speaker 1: and this was they would call these machines dummies, because
Speaker 1: that's all they could do is just play something back.
Speaker 1: So they had more dummies than they had editing machines.
Speaker 1: Where they could write to magnetic tape, they would record
Speaker 1: to magnetic tape both the tones that would control the
Speaker 1: various animatronic actions, the lighting of the theater, any other
Speaker 1: elements that needed to happen within the theater, they would
Speaker 1: all be encoded on this magnetic tape as well, and
Speaker 1: they would also have the audio for the actual presentation.
Speaker 1: So in the case of Great Moments with Mr Lincoln,
Speaker 1: the various speeches that Mr Lincoln delivers had to be
Speaker 1: on that magnetic tape as well. You would first produce
Speaker 1: an individual tape for every single one of those, and
Speaker 1: then you would end up combining those onto a master tape. Eventually,
Speaker 1: there's actually a step in between, called a submaster, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna simplify for the purposes of this podcast, so
Speaker 1: that if ultimately you would end up with a master
Speaker 1: tape that would have everything you needed on it, you
Speaker 1: might imagine that having one master tape that has multiple
Speaker 1: tracks numbering and more than two dozen in some cases,
Speaker 1: that you could run into some interference and you would
Speaker 1: be right. It turned out that some of these, because
Speaker 1: of the different volumes that they recorded at the tones
Speaker 1: would sometimes mask one another and or other times they
Speaker 1: would activate more than one element and you'd end up
Speaker 1: with chaos. So Mr Lincoln might end up having a
Speaker 1: bit of a freak out on stage while delivering the
Speaker 1: Getty's brig address, and that just doesn't convey the stately
Speaker 1: nature that you want when you're trying to reenact one
Speaker 1: of the most iconic moments in American history that there is.
Speaker 1: Having Abraham Lincoln's eyebrows go crazy all over his face
Speaker 1: while he's talking might be a little distracting, so it
Speaker 1: required a painstaking process of editing. They would get the
Speaker 1: magnetic tape, they would run it through the system using
Speaker 1: one of these dummies. They would take notes, copious notes
Speaker 1: about everything that was going on with the performance of
Speaker 1: the audio animatronic show, in this case Great Moments with
Speaker 1: Mr Lincoln, and anything that went wrong they had to
Speaker 1: make note of whether it was a hand motion or
Speaker 1: an eyebrow, or the mouth wasn't moving in sync with
Speaker 1: the sound owned or maybe the sound itself was at
Speaker 1: the wrong volume. Whatever the problem was, they had to
Speaker 1: make note of it, and then they had to take
Speaker 1: that same magnetic tape back and figure out how they
Speaker 1: could fix it. Sometimes they could fix it by making
Speaker 1: a couple of tweaks. Sometimes it require re recording an
Speaker 1: entire section, so it might be that you're recording a
Speaker 1: brand new section just to control the fingers on the
Speaker 1: left hand. That's how exacting this had to be. And
Speaker 1: again you had to make sure that you were synchronizing
Speaker 1: it with everything else, and it may be that you
Speaker 1: would find that one element is slightly out of sync
Speaker 1: of everything else. You had planned it out, you plotted it,
Speaker 1: you recorded it. When you laid down the tracks, you
Speaker 1: didn't realize that they didn't quite line up the way
Speaker 1: you wanted them to, and that might require you to
Speaker 1: cut out one of the tracks and then splice it
Speaker 1: back in by hand cranking the system to the right
Speaker 1: starting point and adjusting it that way. So maybe you
Speaker 1: would say, all right, well, the track for the left
Speaker 1: hand needs to start at second number two point four,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately it's starting at two point eight, and because
Speaker 1: of that, the left hand is making gestures point four
Speaker 1: seconds after it's supposed to, and it looks ridiculous. You
Speaker 1: would have to go back and try and hand crank
Speaker 1: it to the spot where it needs to start and
Speaker 1: splice it back in that section that track back into
Speaker 1: the master. Worst case scenario scenario, you'd have to rerecord
Speaker 1: the master and just make sure everything is lined up
Speaker 1: in its new orientation based upon the notes you made
Speaker 1: to make matters even more complicated. They were using a
Speaker 1: sound studio that was busy during the day, so the
Speaker 1: only time the engineers could actually work on this project,
Speaker 1: which had to be done before the World's Fair opened,
Speaker 1: was at night. They would go to this recording studio
Speaker 1: at night that had its equipment on different floors, so
Speaker 1: they actually had to run cabling systems to go up
Speaker 1: and down floors so that they could connect the various
Speaker 1: parts that they were using in order to make these
Speaker 1: minute changes. It was incredibly painstaking process to get the
Speaker 1: the performance that they wanted, all using this combination of pneumatics, hydraulics,
Speaker 1: and solenoids to see if they can get the right
Speaker 1: sequence of movements to match the prerecorded audio and give
Speaker 1: the experience that they intended to their audience. Programming this
Speaker 1: way took a lot of work. If you watch there's
Speaker 1: a Wonderful World of Color episode where they talk about
Speaker 1: the Disneyland presence at the World's Fair and the way
Speaker 1: the audio animatronics work. There's a point where Walt Disney
Speaker 1: walks up to one of his imagineers who's wearing this
Speaker 1: weird harness. Uh, there's a control system. It's directly connected
Speaker 1: to the father character of Carousel of Progress. So when
Speaker 1: the guy makes a big motion with his arm, you
Speaker 1: see the Carousel of Progress character make that same motion,
Speaker 1: and Disney refers to that as programming, but that's not
Speaker 1: actually how they programmed it. They programmed it more more
Speaker 1: granularly than that. They could control a character directly using
Speaker 1: this method, but that was only really good for one
Speaker 1: on one digital puppetry, as in, you have a human
Speaker 1: controller actually manipulating the character at that very moment. If
Speaker 1: you wanted it automated, you had to go through this other,
Speaker 1: very painstaking process. And this is pretty much how they
Speaker 1: used audio animatronics. For the next several years, they would
Speaker 1: develop lots of different rides that used audio animatronic figures.
Speaker 1: Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, rides like that,
Speaker 1: where you had some sophisticated movements, something a little more
Speaker 1: advanced than just a static character turning. A lot of
Speaker 1: the dark rides in Fantasy Land are more primitive and
Speaker 1: don't need to be audio animatronic because there's no real
Speaker 1: articulation with the characters. They're kind of static and they
Speaker 1: can move up and down or turn left and right,
Speaker 1: but they don't have any facial motion, or their limbs
Speaker 1: don't really move in any meaningful way, as opposed to
Speaker 1: characters that say Pirates or Haunted Mansion, some of those
Speaker 1: have much more sophisticated movements and needed the audio animatronic
Speaker 1: system in order to do it. To me, it's fascinating
Speaker 1: that they were able to do all of this using tones,
Speaker 1: whether it was to just create that binary system or
Speaker 1: the UH analog system where you had the variable voltage
Speaker 1: that could create different types of movement. And I'm also
Speaker 1: fascinated by all the different people who worked on these systems.
Speaker 1: There were a ton of them who all contributed, and
Speaker 1: without them, these just wouldn't even be a reality today. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were able to make a huge impact at the
Speaker 1: New York World's Fair, and this really did cement Disney
Speaker 1: as being an innovative company, not just in movies and animation,
Speaker 1: but also in theme parks and experiences. UH. It set
Speaker 1: them apart from their competitors. And it wasn't just the theming,
Speaker 1: which has always been one of disney strong suits, but
Speaker 1: the technology itself, the fact that the company was willing
Speaker 1: to be a pioneer in those spaces. So I find
Speaker 1: it one of the most interesting stories, and I love
Speaker 1: the fact that it also gives me the opportunity to
Speaker 1: touch on other elements of the mechanical and technological worlds,
Speaker 1: stuff like pneumatic systems, hydraulic systems, the concept of cams,
Speaker 1: the concept of solenoids. All of these elements are obviously
Speaker 1: components of the audio animatronic systems, but also it's fun
Speaker 1: to have that opportunity to just touch on those in
Speaker 1: this episode and to tell you, guys, you know what
Speaker 1: those were and how they were incorporated into this audio
Speaker 1: animatronic system. So the next time you ride one of
Speaker 1: these rides, think about all the technology that went into
Speaker 1: it and the fact that it's just magnetic tape that's
Speaker 1: giving all the instructions and not through any sort of
Speaker 1: computer program, but literally through sound. That the sound itself
Speaker 1: is what allows the circuits to complete, and it varies
Speaker 1: that voltage, and it allows Mr Lincoln to stand up
Speaker 1: as he addresses you. And here's where we get to
Speaker 1: my story of a funny little Disney World fail. This
Speaker 1: was at disney World, not at Disneyland, and it was
Speaker 1: the first time my wife had ever been to Disney World,
Speaker 1: and I was so excited because if you've been to
Speaker 1: Disney World several times, after a while, you know what
Speaker 1: to expect. And while it is still an amazing achievement
Speaker 1: to have built an amusement park so uh immersive and
Speaker 1: with such detail, and to then staff it with people
Speaker 1: who have some of the best customer service points in
Speaker 1: the world, that alone is amazing. But if you go
Speaker 1: with someone who has never been before and you've been
Speaker 1: several times, there's a special kind of joy there because
Speaker 1: you can almost experience Disney World for the first time
Speaker 1: by vicariously experiencing it through your friend who had not
Speaker 1: been there before. In this case, it was my wife.
Speaker 1: She had never been to Disney World, so I was
Speaker 1: having this wonderful experience of taking her to different rides
Speaker 1: and she gets to see them for the first time,
Speaker 1: and she's blown away, and I remember how special it
Speaker 1: is because again, I've ridden most of these rides dozens
Speaker 1: of times, so for me, while I enjoyed them, the
Speaker 1: special part it kind of worn off. Seeing it through
Speaker 1: her eyes brought it all back and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: Then we go to the Hall of Presidents, and at
Speaker 1: the Hall of Presidents, uh, the curtains open and if
Speaker 1: you've never been to the Hall of Presidents at Disney World,
Speaker 1: there's a point where curtains open up and you see
Speaker 1: all of the presidence of the United States. They're all there,
Speaker 1: Every single one who's ever sat as president is there,
Speaker 1: animated this audio animatronic and they all do little weird things,
Speaker 1: like they fidget, they look around. Some of them appear
Speaker 1: to be a little bored with what's going on. Some
Speaker 1: of them seem really engaged. It's kind of it's kind
Speaker 1: of charming. They introduced them one at a time. Well,
Speaker 1: Mr Lincoln uh sits in a chair and then when
Speaker 1: it's his turn to actually address the audience, because he first,
Speaker 1: they introduce everybody, and everyone does a little gesture. They
Speaker 1: might not or wave a hand, but ultimately Lincoln stands
Speaker 1: up and then delivers a speech to the audience. When
Speaker 1: the curtains open, Lincoln was already standing. He was not
Speaker 1: seated as he normally would be, which tells me that
Speaker 1: the hydraulic system for his legs had already activated. However,
Speaker 1: he was not standing tall. He was bent at the waist.
Speaker 1: So he's standing up bent out as if he's tying
Speaker 1: his shoes, and his two arms are dangling at his sides,
Speaker 1: but they're still animated, so you still see them fidget
Speaker 1: and gesture. When he's announced and the spotlight hits his chair,
Speaker 1: which he was not sitting in, so the spotlight's actually
Speaker 1: hitting behind where he was, his hand made a little motion.
Speaker 1: It was at that point that I expected someone from Disney,
Speaker 1: one of the cast members to come down and hit
Speaker 1: the stop on the show, but they had not yet
Speaker 1: noticed the problem, and so I was starting to get
Speaker 1: the giggles a little bit. My wife was definitely getting
Speaker 1: the giggles, and my dad was encouraging it. My dad
Speaker 1: is the ultimate dad joke dad, and I love him dearly.
Speaker 1: But I hear my dad just say I begged them
Speaker 1: not to make an animatronic John Wilkes booth completely inappropriate
Speaker 1: and hilarious and tragic and hilarious. So we're watching as
Speaker 1: Lincoln continues to just stick late while bent over, staring
Speaker 1: at the floor. Ah. And then it gets to his
Speaker 1: speech and the music swells and he starts to speak
Speaker 1: and move his arms more expressively, still bent at the waist,
Speaker 1: he does not stand up. It's at that point that
Speaker 1: a Disney cast member takes notice and rushes down and
Speaker 1: hits the stop button which closes the curtains, and says,
Speaker 1: Mr Lincoln is not feeling very well, please check back
Speaker 1: again later today. And as we walk out, I, you know,
Speaker 1: we start making other jokes like is that my face
Speaker 1: on that penny, Little jokes about Lincoln bent over for
Speaker 1: some reason. And uh, it's unfortunate because that's my wife's
Speaker 1: first and first impression of the Hall of Presidents. That's her,
Speaker 1: that's the memory she associates with it. And I know
Speaker 1: for a fact that I can never take her to
Speaker 1: the Hall of Presidents ever again and have her take
Speaker 1: it seriously at all. Whenever it gets to Lincoln, she's
Speaker 1: gonna get the giggles, and she's gonna expect him to
Speaker 1: stand up and bend over at the waist and just
Speaker 1: stare at the floor for the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: So these animatronics didn't always work perfectly. Sometimes some part
Speaker 1: of the system or other would fail, and once that happens,
Speaker 1: then you get these sort of experiences where maybe part
Speaker 1: of the animation just isn't working. It could be something
Speaker 1: as simple as an arm is not animating the way
Speaker 1: it's supposed to, or it could be something a little
Speaker 1: more noticeable, like a character is bent over and slumped
Speaker 1: down because they don't have the proper pressure to stand up. Uh.
Speaker 1: It probably was just a valve that had failed to open,
Speaker 1: so there was probably some circuit where it had no
Speaker 1: longer was completing, and therefore the hydraulic system could not
Speaker 1: actually activate through the upper half of Mr. Lincoln, so
Speaker 1: he couldn't stand up tall. That's that's my guess as
Speaker 1: a you know, armchair technologist taking a look at what happened.
Speaker 1: So that's it. That's how audio animatronics work. It is
Speaker 1: a really interesting system. I love the fact that it
Speaker 1: predates computer systems for theme parks. These days, you're going
Speaker 1: to find much more complicated programming. There's gonna be microprocessors
Speaker 1: and characters. I don't know for a fact that the
Speaker 1: characters they added to the Pirates of the Caribbean Ride,
Speaker 1: for example, are more advanced versions. Like there's a Johnny
Speaker 1: Depp character that shows up three times in the new
Speaker 1: Pirates of the Caribbean Ride. Uh, there's Barbosa character. Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Rush's character from the movies is also in that. I
Speaker 1: suspect that those are updated systems that are not running
Speaker 1: on the old audio animatronic system. But that's just a guess.
Speaker 1: I do not know that for a fact. They are
Speaker 1: certainly much more sophisticated than the original Pirates of the
Speaker 1: Caribbean characters were. Now, there's a lot more stuff I
Speaker 1: could talk about, Like I could talk about how Disney
Speaker 1: had to work on building a new type of material
Speaker 1: for these human figures called d reflex. It's not the
Speaker 1: same thing that you find in cars that have duraflex bumpers,
Speaker 1: but they had to created reflex because latex was too
Speaker 1: delicate to work over and over, especially in an environment
Speaker 1: that had lots of oil and moving parts. Uh sod.
Speaker 1: Reflex was the thing that they had to create in
Speaker 1: order to keep a realistic skin looking texture. But I
Speaker 1: figured that's for another episode further down the line. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes,
Speaker 1: I should cover things topics that you've always wanted to
Speaker 1: know about, or people I should have on the show
Speaker 1: and interview. You should let me know. Send me a message.
Speaker 1: My email address is text Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle at both of those is
Speaker 1: text stuff hs W and remember you can watch me
Speaker 1: live on Twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. When I
Speaker 1: record these episodes, there are people watch them live right
Speaker 1: now as I record this, not as you hear it,
Speaker 1: but as I recorded, and they're awesome. So come join
Speaker 1: the awesome people. We have a chat room. We chatted
Speaker 1: up and uh, I would love to see you over there,
Speaker 1: so Twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff you can see
Speaker 1: what the schedule is over there. I hope to see
Speaker 1: you there soon and I'll talk to you guys again
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