Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host job and Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you?
Speaker 2: It is Friday.
Speaker 1: It's time for a classic episode of tech Stuff. This
Speaker 1: one originally published back on June twenty third, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: It is called the Wonderful world of Audio Animatronics, a
Speaker 1: topic that is near and dear to my heart. I've
Speaker 1: talked about it more than once on this show. Audio
Speaker 1: animatrics have popped up a few times in different episodes.
Speaker 1: This one is dedicated to the technology enjoy I am
Speaker 1: an enormous Disney fanatic. I consider myself a Disney fan
Speaker 1: of film, of television, of their theme parks. Probably not
Speaker 1: necessarily in that or maybe film first then theme parks
Speaker 1: than television, but I'm a huge fan of Disney stuff.
Speaker 1: And recently, when I was on a trip to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles to attend E three, I found myself with a
Speaker 1: day with nothing to do. I had hoped to book
Speaker 1: some meetings that did not happen, so instead of just
Speaker 1: sitting around my hotel room feeling sorry for myself, in
Speaker 1: a city where I really didn't know anybody.
Speaker 2: I decided to hop on down to.
Speaker 1: Orange County, California, that is the home of Disneyland, and
Speaker 1: to go to the happiest place on Earth. It was
Speaker 1: not my first time at Disneyland, but this was the
Speaker 1: first time I'd ever gone to Disneyland completely on my own,
Speaker 1: and I was a little worried about that, like, how
Speaker 1: am I going to have fun just by myself. Turns out,
Speaker 1: Disneyland did most of the work for me. I didn't
Speaker 1: have to worry so much and had a great time.
Speaker 1: But it also reminded me of how much I love
Speaker 1: the technology and innovation that goes behind Disneyland. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I could do maybe a dozen episodes about different technologies
Speaker 1: that were pioneered or perfected at the Disney theme parks,
Speaker 1: because there are a ton of them that Disney either
Speaker 1: directly had a hand in developing or tweaked it in
Speaker 1: a way to elevate it beyond what it used to be.
Speaker 2: There are plenty of examples of that.
Speaker 1: Today, we're specifically going to focus on audio animatronics. And
Speaker 1: for those who have not heard what this term is
Speaker 1: or have any idea what it means this was a
Speaker 1: system that Walt Disney's company pioneered to create animated, physical,
Speaker 1: three dimensional figures. So in a way, it's kind of
Speaker 1: similar to puppetry, right with a puppet, typically you're manipulating
Speaker 1: some sort of three dimensional figure. Beyond shadow puppets and
Speaker 1: that sort of puppet tree, which is amazing all on
Speaker 1: its own, I'm talking about your traditional hand puppets, rod puppets,
Speaker 1: and marionettes. That involves manipulating and inanimate object in a
Speaker 1: way to make it seem like it has life, that
Speaker 1: has anima, and that you are using some sort of system,
Speaker 1: whether it's rods or 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 one hundredth time the character
Speaker 1: is doing a show, it's exactly the way it was
Speaker 1: the first time. So once you perfect a show, and
Speaker 1: you program that into these these figures, you then have
Speaker 1: the perfect show every single time you run it, assuming
Speaker 1: everything's working properly. Now, anyone who has been to Disney
Speaker 1: and times knows that's a big assumption to make.
Speaker 2: Sometimes things just don't do not work really well.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about one of those times that I
Speaker 1: experienced firsthand later on in this show. But the technology
Speaker 1: itself is phenomenal, and even when it isn't working properly,
Speaker 1: that does not take away from how amazing this tech
Speaker 1: really is, especially when you consider what people had to
Speaker 1: work with back in the fifties and early sixties when
Speaker 1: they were first developing these systems. It is pretty amazing stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason why Disney wanted this in the first place
Speaker 1: is he really loved the idea of creating a real,
Speaker 1: three dimensional experience, similar to what you would get with
Speaker 1: an animated film. Animated films can be perfected right, you
Speaker 1: can sit there and sketch it out and get it
Speaker 1: just right before you release it as a movie. He
Speaker 1: wanted to have that same sort of experience, but in
Speaker 1: the real physical world. He was a stickler for perfection,
Speaker 1: had very, very very high standards and the people who
Speaker 1: worked for him. They also would end up having very
Speaker 1: high standards. Everyone wanted to make sure that they met
Speaker 1: Disney's expectations. Now you can find animatronic figures in lots
Speaker 1: of Disney attractions, including the Enchanted Tiki Room, Pirates of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, Great Moments with Mister Lincoln,
Speaker 1: the Hall of Presidents which would be over at the
Speaker 1: Magic Kingdom, and Disney World, and tons more. There are
Speaker 1: lots of examples. There are also some attractions that had
Speaker 1: moving figures that didn't use the audio animatronic system. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the Jungle Cruise ride has animated animal figures.
Speaker 1: As you ride through, you see hippopotamuses and crocodiles and elephants,
Speaker 1: but these were running on a very simple mechanical loop system.
Speaker 1: They were not specifically audio animatronic.
Speaker 2: They worked on something that was a little.
Speaker 1: Less sophisticated than what would follow. So you have both
Speaker 1: at Disney Parks. And I'm also sad that I can't
Speaker 1: have Holly on this episode. Holly, who's one of the
Speaker 1: co hosts of Stuff You Missed in History Class. Apart
Speaker 1: from being a brilliant podcaster and an avid historian. She
Speaker 1: is an enormous fan of all things Disney, and she
Speaker 1: doesn't just give me a run for my money, she
Speaker 1: leaves me in the dust. I love Disney, I have
Speaker 1: been to the Disney parks dozens of times, but Holly
Speaker 1: is a step beyond even my own obsession. So I
Speaker 1: am sad that I can't have her here because I
Speaker 1: am absolutely certain that she would be here dropping nuggets
Speaker 1: of knowledge and trivia about these various Disney attractions that
Speaker 1: I have yet to uncover.
Speaker 2: So maybe someday I will be.
Speaker 1: Able to have Holly on this show, and we'll do
Speaker 1: it Disney oriented episode about some other type of tech.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, there are some other podcasts we've done
Speaker 1: that relate to Disney. I did one about the Pepper's
Speaker 1: Ghost effect, which is used extensively.
Speaker 2: In the Haunted Mansion ride.
Speaker 1: Pepper's Ghost involves reflective surfaces and using lighting in a
Speaker 1: way so that you can create the illusion of a
Speaker 1: ghostly figure appearing before you, but what you're actually looking
Speaker 1: at is a reflection of a physical figure that's just
Speaker 1: lit in a very bright space, whereas you're in a
Speaker 1: very dark space. The famous ballroom sequence in The Haunted
Speaker 1: Mansion ride is a big example of Pepper's Ghost. So
Speaker 1: you can go and check out those episodes of tech stuff.
Speaker 1: If this is not enough Disney for you, all right,
Speaker 1: let's talk specifically about what I wanted to concentrate on today.
Speaker 1: To do that, we have to mention Walt Disney because
Speaker 1: he's central to our story. He's kind of our main
Speaker 1: character if this were a narrative. His full name was
Speaker 1: Walter Elias Disney. He was born in nineteen oh one
Speaker 1: in Illinois. He grew up in Missouri and attended high
Speaker 1: school in Chicago. He was studying art primarily. When he
Speaker 1: was sixteen, he dropped out to join the army, but
Speaker 1: they rejected him because he was too young. He then
Speaker 1: joined the Red Cross and was shipped over to Europe
Speaker 1: and drove ambulances during World War One in France. Once
Speaker 1: is his work with the Red Cross was done over there,
Speaker 1: he moved back to the United States and he began
Speaker 1: to work for an ad company. He was making film
Speaker 1: and animations. Then he would go on to create his
Speaker 1: own studio, which saw some modest success, but then it
Speaker 1: ran into some hard times. Eventually he had to declare bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: Under his first studio, but 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. A lot of that has to do
Speaker 1: with Disney, as a corporate entity, lobbying to extend those parameters.
Speaker 1: So Disney's impact on technology has been enormous in both
Speaker 1: very specific ways that relate to particular technologies to the
Speaker 1: way that the those technologies are protected under intellectual property law.
Speaker 1: So Disney's use of sound with animation was a huge
Speaker 1: leap forward in the nineteen twenties, Steamboat Willie being the
Speaker 1: first cartoon with sound, and Disney himself voiced the iconic
Speaker 1: character of Mickey Mouse, who struck a chord with viewers
Speaker 1: and propelled Disney into enormous success. Over the following decades,
Speaker 1: he would see a lot more success, including going into
Speaker 1: feature link animation, which had not been done before, and
Speaker 1: he was able to succeed with Snow White and the
Speaker 1: Seven Dwarfs, and he also continued to see success with
Speaker 1: short form stuff. Now, depending upon the account you read,
Speaker 1: because there are a couple different versions of the story,
Speaker 1: we actually begin either in France or the French Quarter
Speaker 1: in New Orleans. The story goes that Disney was on
Speaker 1: vacation with his family, and as he was on vacation,
Speaker 1: and he decided to look into some antique shops and
Speaker 1: he came across some various clockwork toys, wind up birds,
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. One specific toy he came
Speaker 1: across in an antique shop was a bird cage that
Speaker 1: had a mechanical bird inside of it that would chirp
Speaker 1: and sing, and it would make little motions that you
Speaker 1: could describe as being somewhat robotic. They were pretty primitive motions,
Speaker 1: but you know, close enough to being an actual bird
Speaker 1: that you knew what it was. It wasn't like it
Speaker 1: looked like a monstrosity or anything like that. He thought
Speaker 1: it was absolutely charming, and he felt that there was
Speaker 1: a lot of potential there that he could use to
Speaker 1: create three dimensional, physical animated figurines, potentially in a theme park.
Speaker 1: That was one of the things he had been considering
Speaker 1: around this time, although Disneyland had not yet become a reality.
Speaker 1: So he brought the antique bird cage with the mechanical
Speaker 1: bird inside of it back to his company, and he
Speaker 1: went to some of his top thinkers over at the
Speaker 1: Walt 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 once 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 technology is 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 actress. 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, using engineering and creativity married together to create
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: He also had.
Speaker 1: An ability to contribute to a massive event that would
Speaker 1: happened in the mid nineteen sixties, That is, the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four World's Fair in New York that was going
Speaker 1: to end up requiring a lot of work on Disney's part.
Speaker 1: Years in advance, he knew that he was going to
Speaker 1: be providing four attractions for this World's Fair, and he
Speaker 1: knew that the entire attention of the world was going
Speaker 1: to be on New York for this event. So he
Speaker 1: wanted to make absolutely certain that the attractions that his
Speaker 1: company designed were phenomenal and unlike anything anyone had ever experienced,
Speaker 1: and for that he needed to pioneer a new technology.
Speaker 1: So all he had to do from that point forward
Speaker 1: was just invent it. No big shakes, right, So to start.
Speaker 1: One of the earliest experiments with this idea of animating
Speaker 1: a three dimensional figure was what would eventually be called
Speaker 1: the Day Dancing Man or the Little Man project. This
Speaker 1: would be of a figure that measured about nine inches
Speaker 1: tall and was meant to dance based upon this automated
Speaker 1: 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 what, You're working on a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, but I want to pay you out of
Speaker 1: my own pocket for a project that I really believe
Speaker 1: in that's not really a company project yet. I want
Speaker 1: to create scenes that evoke the American way of life,
Speaker 1: and Disney had a very idyllic sense of what that meant.
Speaker 1: That small town feel that you get when you walk
Speaker 1: down Main Street, USA, if you're ever at Disneyland or
Speaker 1: disney World and you're walking down Main Street, especially if
Speaker 1: you're doing it at a time when there's not a
Speaker 1: huge crowd there, it evokes the sense of a small
Speaker 1: town maybe early nineteen hundreds, around the time when Walt
Speaker 1: Disney himself would have been growing up, where if things
Speaker 1: appeared to be simple and elegant. That's what Disney wanted
Speaker 1: to create, and so he talked to Anderson, said, I
Speaker 1: want to have this idea of building this kind of
Speaker 1: experience in miniature where people can look at the different
Speaker 1: miniatures we design and different elements of it actually come
Speaker 1: to life. So at first he wanted to get some paintings,
Speaker 1: some sketches of this. So Anderson got to work and
Speaker 1: one of the first things he created was a Norman
Speaker 1: Rockwell esque scene of a soft shoe dancer performing on.
Speaker 2: 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 work with
Speaker 1: a couple of other folks over at Disney. He went
Speaker 1: to a sculptor who was working for the company at
Speaker 1: the time. The sculptor's name was Charles Clarence Cristadoro, and
Speaker 1: Cristadoro's dad was a famous agricultural scientist and farmer who
Speaker 1: had written extensively about agriculture. Cristadora himself had become a
Speaker 1: notable sculptor, working both in the public spaces, designing statues
Speaker 1: that were shown in San Diego and other areas of California,
Speaker 1: and also working in the movie industry. He had worked
Speaker 1: for Disney once during the nineteen thirties, left the company,
Speaker 1: and then came back in the early nineteen fifties. He
Speaker 1: was given the sketch and told to make a physical
Speaker 1: model of the dancer, which he did. He sculpted a
Speaker 1: physical model based upon the Ken Anderson painting and gave
Speaker 1: that to Disney. Disney then took the model over to
Speaker 1: the machine shop, and he also brought in the animation department. Now,
Speaker 1: right now seems like it would be a good time
Speaker 1: to summarize all the areas that came together to make
Speaker 1: audio animatronics even possible. And I realized I haven't even
Speaker 1: gotten to what audio animatronics can do and how they
Speaker 1: do it. But it's important to understand the different departments
Speaker 1: to kind of get a grip on why it was
Speaker 1: so complicated and why it called for a multidisciplinary approach
Speaker 1: because that's exactly what audio animatronics were. It required people
Speaker 1: of vastly different disciplines and knowledge base in order to
Speaker 1: make this happen.
Speaker 2: So, in no.
Speaker 1: Particular order, here are some of the departments at Disney
Speaker 1: that worked on pioneering audio animatronics. First, there was the
Speaker 1: Sound Department. Now it might seem weird that I'm starting
Speaker 1: with the Sound department instead of the Mechanical Shop or animation,
Speaker 1: but the reason for that is the Sound department was
Speaker 1: in charge of the audio animatronic projects because those depended
Speaker 1: so heavily on that audio component. I'll explain more about
Speaker 1: how and a little bit. The sound department was ultimately
Speaker 1: the one that was holding onto the project, the project
Speaker 1: leader that was the head of development. This would end
Speaker 1: up actually causing some issues later on. There'd be some
Speaker 1: disagreements between the Sound department and some other departments, and
Speaker 1: they were run by different unions, which also meant that
Speaker 1: they would run into these weird problems. There was a
Speaker 1: story in one of the articles I read about how
Speaker 1: the mechanical department, the Mechanical Shop, they might be working
Speaker 1: on an audio animatronic figure, and they would need to
Speaker 1: disconnect it so that they can make an adjustment before
Speaker 1: reconnecting it. But they weren't allowed to actually disconnect the
Speaker 1: figure because that was a union job that one of
Speaker 1: the sound department guys would have to do. So they'd
Speaker 1: have to go and get someone from the sound department
Speaker 1: to come over to the machine shop, disconnect a tube,
Speaker 1: wait until the mechanical shop people had made their adjustments,
Speaker 1: reconnect the tube, and then they could proceed. By union rules,
Speaker 1: the machine shop folks were not allowed to do that
Speaker 1: on their own, so it got very frustrating at times.
Speaker 1: Then you've got the animation Department Disney, of course, famous
Speaker 1: for animation. This was the group of artists who had
Speaker 1: studied movement extensively. If you're going to animate movement, you
Speaker 1: have to understand how movement works, or else you can't
Speaker 1: replicate it properly and it's not going to look right
Speaker 1: when you watch an animated film. And more importantly, they
Speaker 1: had been studying animated movement in film itself. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, film or at least magnetic tape, would become
Speaker 1: incredibly important with audio animatronics. They leveraged their expertise to
Speaker 1: help design not just the physical objects that would be
Speaker 1: animated and the actual motions those objects would make, but
Speaker 1: also the very technique for programming the objects, and i'll
Speaker 1: explain more about that in a little bit.
Speaker 2: Then you had the modeling department.
Speaker 1: These were the people who would make three dimensional models
Speaker 1: and sculptures of the various components that you wanted so
Speaker 1: that other departments could use that as a reference. And
Speaker 1: then you had the machine shop. The machine department had
Speaker 1: to fabricate all the physical pieces that would be used
Speaker 1: in these various figures, and then you also had props
Speaker 1: and costumes that would end up outfitting these different figures.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of different moving parts, both
Speaker 1: metaphorically and literally, as it turns out when you get
Speaker 1: to audio animatronics, in order to make it possible, and
Speaker 1: all of those groups had their own leaders and their
Speaker 1: own priorities, but the fact that they were able to
Speaker 1: collaborate and create a system as intricate as audio animatronics
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing all on its own. And we haven't
Speaker 1: even gotten to the technology yet. So I want to
Speaker 1: get to that technology, and I will in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break and thank our sponsor.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So you've got the machine shop and they were creating
Speaker 1: the Dancing Man or the Little Man, and Disney decided
Speaker 1: that he needed to have someone in charge of figuring
Speaker 1: out the animation for this, like figuring out what moves
Speaker 1: would need to be animated, so he tapped a guy
Speaker 1: named Wathel Rogers to work on the animation for it Now.
Speaker 1: Rogers was born in Stratton, Colorado, in nineteen nineteen, and
Speaker 1: he was a sculptor and engineer. He attended an art
Speaker 1: institute in Los Angeles and was recruited directly out of
Speaker 1: school to the Walt Disney Studios in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: He worked as an animator on films like Pinocchio and Bambi.
Speaker 1: During World War Two, he took leave of the Disney
Speaker 1: Company and served in the United States Marine Corps as
Speaker 1: a staff sergeant in the photographics section. And when he
Speaker 1: wasn't animating, he was tinkering. He was creating toys and
Speaker 1: model trains, and Walt Disney was also a model train fanatic.
Speaker 1: He loved model trains, including trains large enough to ride on,
Speaker 1: and he had a couple at his property. He had
Speaker 1: a private little railroad track because he just loved trains.
Speaker 1: He loved that romantic image of travel by train. A
Speaker 1: lot of the things that Disney worked on, he worked
Speaker 1: on while he was traveling via train, So he and
Speaker 1: Rogers had a lot of common ground there, and Disney
Speaker 1: thought that Rogers had a lot of potential to work
Speaker 1: on actual physical implementations, not just animation, so he began
Speaker 1: to rely on Rogers to sculpt objects for live action pictures,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen fifty four he tapped Rogers to help
Speaker 1: design buildings for Disneyland, so Rogers went from animator to
Speaker 1: almost like an architect. Rogers would also become a chief
Speaker 1: contributor to this audio animatronics project. In fact, some would
Speaker 1: argue that he was, essentially, when you got down to it,
Speaker 1: the lead audio animatronic engineer. He is also immortalized by
Speaker 1: the way at Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction. You can find
Speaker 1: his tombstone there. One of the tombstones has a name
Speaker 1: that is an homage to him, has created while he
Speaker 1: was still alive. The tombstone reads, here rests Wothel r Bender.
Speaker 1: He rode to glory on a fender peaceful rest. So
Speaker 1: while his actual name was Rogers, not Bender. That's in
Speaker 1: honor of him now as a reference, Disney decided to
Speaker 1: bring in an actor to actually perform a soft shoe routine,
Speaker 1: and they were going to shoot this actor with film
Speaker 1: film cameras, not actually shoot the actor, even Disney would
Speaker 1: not do something so brazen as that, but rather to
Speaker 1: film the actor as he was doing the soft shoe
Speaker 1: routine against a background that was a grid, so that
Speaker 1: the animators could review the footage, use the grid as
Speaker 1: reference points, watch every little motion and try and figure
Speaker 1: out how they were going to translate that into animation
Speaker 1: when they built this system that they were working on.
Speaker 1: The actor that they got, by the way, was Buddy Epsen,
Speaker 1: who was originally going to play the role of the
Speaker 1: Tin Man in the nineteen thirty nine With of Oz Masterpiece.
Speaker 1: But Ebsen ended up having a massive allergic reaction to
Speaker 1: the aluminum makeup that was used for the ten Woodsman,
Speaker 1: and so he would end up being replaced by Jack Haley. However,
Speaker 1: you can actually still hear Ebsen's voice in the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz. It's his voice in the song We're off
Speaker 1: to see the Wizard that Dorothy Scarecrow and the Tin
Speaker 1: Woodsman sing after they've rescued the Tin Woodsman. So that
Speaker 1: bit where they're skipping off into the distance, the voice
Speaker 1: you hear is not Jack Hayley's, it's Buddy Ebsen. He also,
Speaker 1: by the way, played Jed Clampet in The Beverly Hillbillies,
Speaker 1: so if you ever watched that television series, he was
Speaker 1: Jed Clampitt. Ebsen was a song and dance man back
Speaker 1: in the day, so it was a natural choice for.
Speaker 2: Disney to bring him on.
Speaker 1: He would end up working on several Disney initiatives, including
Speaker 1: Davy Crockett, but for this he just got up. He
Speaker 1: did a soft shoe route. They took several takes of it,
Speaker 1: and they used that to be their reference that the
Speaker 1: animators could use and that the machine shop could use
Speaker 1: to make sure that the pieces they designed would be
Speaker 1: capable 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 design for
Speaker 1: that specifically. Now, one of the mechanical engineers who was
Speaker 1: working on this project was Roger Edward Broggie technically Roger E.
Speaker 1: Broggy Senior. His son was also working for Disney and
Speaker 1: would become an imagineer. Broggy had moved to California from
Speaker 1: Chicago in the late nineteen twenties with experience in machine
Speaker 1: shop training. He joined Disney in nineteen thirty nine, so
Speaker 1: he was originally working on some of their live action films.
Speaker 1: He helped design special effects for twenty thousand Leagues under
Speaker 1: the Sea. He also helped Walt Disney build some of
Speaker 1: those model trains for his personal collection, and Broggy was
Speaker 1: one of the engineers working on this Dancing Man project.
Speaker 1: He would later say that was a huge challenge in
Speaker 1: part because Ebsen, when he did his soft shoe routine
Speaker 1: for the cameras, never repeated movements in the routine, so
Speaker 1: all the movements he did were original and not patterned.
Speaker 1: They weren't repetition, and that's difficult if you're an animator.
Speaker 1: You would like to have that repetition because you can
Speaker 1: design it once and then essentially cut and paste it
Speaker 1: and use it again. But if everything is new, then
Speaker 1: you have to design it from scratch all the way through.
Speaker 1: It made their job more difficult. Ultimately, they produced this
Speaker 1: nine inch tall figure, and they used cables to attach
Speaker 1: to various points on the figure, and this was controlled
Speaker 1: by external machinery, so you would have what amounts to
Speaker 1: a very complex gearbox that used cams and cables in
Speaker 1: order to control the figure. Now, a cam in case
Speaker 1: you don't know what that term is, it's a rotating
Speaker 1: or sliding piece of machinery, particularly used to transform rotary
Speaker 1: motion into linear motion or vice versa. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you can turn a rotational motion into a back and
Speaker 1: forth or up and down motion a linear one using these,
Speaker 1: or you can use a linear motion to.
Speaker 2: Create a rotational motion.
Speaker 1: If you have heard the term camshaft in vehicles, that's
Speaker 1: what a camshaft does. This was not yet an example
Speaker 1: of audio animatronics.
Speaker 2: This figure.
Speaker 1: It didn't quite work on a full audio animatronic system,
Speaker 1: but it did help plot the course for the next innovation,
Speaker 1: and Disney, not satisfied with creating this nine inched figure,
Speaker 1: wanted to create something more complicated. His next thought was
Speaker 1: a barbershop quartet, a little mechanical barbershop quartet that could
Speaker 1: move and dance and sing. He wanted to sing sweet Autline.
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 all or nothing really. With each of
Speaker 1: 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, which meant that you
Speaker 1: had spatial issues you had to take into account. So
Speaker 1: Disney's original thought was this could be an attraction where
Speaker 1: maybe you walk up to a cabinet, you plunk a
Speaker 1: quarter in, a little curtain draws back, and you see
Speaker 1: this dancing figure dance for a quarter, and then once
Speaker 1: it's done, the curtain draws closed and you move on.
Speaker 1: But the mechanics 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, twenty five
Speaker 1: cents of you is not going to cut it, and
Speaker 1: you can't really go more expensive than that because at
Speaker 1: the time, twenty five cents was a not insignificant amount
Speaker 1: of money.
Speaker 2: And keep in mind, this is the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: All right, We're going to interrupt this classic episode about
Speaker 1: audio animatronics in order for us to take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsors. So these initial attempts to
Speaker 1: create an animated figure in real life had kind of
Speaker 1: stalled out, but plans for Disneyland were continuing at the
Speaker 1: same time. The park opened in July nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: but the first attraction to use audio animatronics would follow
Speaker 1: in five years. That was a ride called the Mind
Speaker 1: Train through Nature's Wonderland, which opened in May nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: And this was able to take advantage of something that
Speaker 1: some of the engineers had noticed. They said, you know,
Speaker 1: these small figures, they require all these cams and cables
Speaker 1: and everything has to be external. We have to build
Speaker 1: the actual power system outside of the figure. So you've
Speaker 1: always got to figure out how to mask all the
Speaker 1: cables that are running up to the figure. If we
Speaker 1: make the figures larger life size. Then we can store
Speaker 1: a lot of these mechanical components inside the figures themselves.
Speaker 1: It won't have to be externally controlled. You could actually
Speaker 1: build these figures that they have the internal parts, and
Speaker 1: thus you have a lot more freedom to stage them
Speaker 1: the way you want to. And this really appealed to Disney,
Speaker 1: so one of the first implementations they had was this
Speaker 1: Mind Train through Nature's Wonderland. Now that ride might sound
Speaker 1: unfamiliar to you if you've been to Disneyland and you're
Speaker 1: wondering where the Mine Train through Nature's Wonderland ride is.
Speaker 2: 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 Mine 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 Western United
Speaker 1: States of America. It was kind of the western version
Speaker 1: of Jungle Cruise. So if you've ever been on the
Speaker 1: Jungle Cruise, that's a boat ride where you go through
Speaker 1: areas that 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. Included things like bears
Speaker 1: playing around in a pond. Now, that was the first
Speaker 1: attraction to feature audio animatronics. And I guess now as
Speaker 1: good a time as any as to explain what audio
Speaker 1: animatronics are. Audio animatronics take on these mechanical figures that
Speaker 1: you can power in various ways, and they pair it
Speaker 1: with a system that is programmable that uses audio as
Speaker 1: its method of transmitting information and taking the information and
Speaker 1: 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 well, 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 you know, there's no microprocessors
Speaker 1: or transistors. It's all mechanical elements. But it is digital
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's binary in that you have
Speaker 1: two positions, you have on and off. That meant that
Speaker 1: any motion you wanted to make had only two outcomes,
Speaker 1: a rest position, which would be whatever it started off as.
Speaker 2: So let's take let's say that it's.
Speaker 1: A human figure that you're trying to animate, and one
Speaker 1: of your animations is your human figure needs to turn
Speaker 1: her head to the left, so in the off position,
Speaker 1: in the rest position, she's just staring straight forward and
Speaker 1: isn't moving. When you activate a circuit, then she moves
Speaker 1: her head to the left, but she can't halfway move
Speaker 1: her head to the left. She can't move it a
Speaker 1: quarter of the way. It's either all the way to
Speaker 1: the left as far as her freedom of movement allows,
Speaker 1: or it's in that rest position. That's it, those two
Speaker 1: positions on or off, zero or one. That's why we
Speaker 1: call it digital. This was a little primitive. It limited
Speaker 1: what the animators could do. They could not put in
Speaker 1: subtle movements, so it was good for certain types of
Speaker 1: audio animatronics early on, but it had limited use. It
Speaker 1: also was limited in how much force it could use.
Speaker 1: These original audio animatronics used one of two different systems
Speaker 1: to create movement. Either it was using pneumatics or it
Speaker 1: was using solenoids. A pneumatic system uses compressed air. Compressed
Speaker 1: air is what creates the force that translates into mechanical
Speaker 1: motion in your system. So you would have tubes, pneumatic
Speaker 1: tubes that would move through this figure. You would have them,
Speaker 1: you know, wherever they needed to be, and you would
Speaker 1: have valves that when they're closed, do not allow air
Speaker 1: to move through. When you would complete a circuit, it
Speaker 1: would make the valve open, which would allow air to
Speaker 1: move through, which would then create the mechanical force necessary
Speaker 1: to make the figure move in whichever way you wanted
Speaker 1: it to. So, let's say it's a bird in the
Speaker 1: enchanted Tiki Room, which was one of the earliest audio
Speaker 1: animatronic attractions outside of Nature's Wonderland and it still exists
Speaker 1: to this day. The pneumatics would allow the mouth to open.
Speaker 1: The closed position would be the rest position, and it
Speaker 1: would allow the mouth to open up. And when you
Speaker 1: do a lot of opening and closing, it gives the
Speaker 1: illusion that the bird is actually talking when you pair
Speaker 1: it with the appropriate sound. That was one way of
Speaker 1: creating motion, but the solenoids were a different way that
Speaker 1: was also being used in this digital system. Solenoids are
Speaker 1: a variation on electromagnets. So those of you who have
Speaker 1: listened to me talk endlessly about electromagnetism, get ready for
Speaker 1: some more so. Your basic electromagnet consists of a coil
Speaker 1: of conductive material. Often it is insulated copper wire. You
Speaker 1: run a current through this coil and that generates a
Speaker 1: magnetic field.
Speaker 2: The magnetic field.
Speaker 1: Can then be used to attract any sort of ferromagnetic material.
Speaker 1: That's the case of a solenoid, where you have a
Speaker 1: core that can act kind of like a piston. So
Speaker 1: when it's in its rest position, the core is outside
Speaker 1: of the cylinder. Maybe it's positioned right at the very end.
Speaker 1: So the cylinder is big enough so that the core
Speaker 1: can fit completely inside the cylinder. And when you run
Speaker 1: a current through the coil, it generates a magnetic field
Speaker 1: which attracts the ferromagnetic core into the cylinder, pulls it in.
Speaker 1: And if you connect something to the other end of
Speaker 1: that little core, like a cable, that then attaches to
Speaker 1: a piece on a larger animatronic figure, like let's say
Speaker 1: a mouth of a character. Whenever the circuit activates, it'll
Speaker 1: pull the solenoid in the core into the solenoid, which
Speaker 1: in turn pulls on the wire or cable which is
Speaker 1: attached to whatever body part the mouth let's say, of
Speaker 1: mister Lincoln, and pulls it down, pulls it open, and
Speaker 1: then by turning off the electricity to this coil, it
Speaker 1: negates that magnetic field. It returns to rest position, and
Speaker 1: Lincoln shuts this trap. And thus, by controlling the flow
Speaker 1: of electricity through this solenoid, you can open and close
Speaker 1: the mouth of one of the greatest presidents of United
Speaker 1: States history, and thus magnificence is born. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was an enormous use of technology, a very innovative use
Speaker 1: of technology at the time. So that was the basics
Speaker 1: for the movement. But that we saw them and talked
Speaker 1: about the audio part, that's kind of more the animatronic part,
Speaker 1: the idea of this animated physical being.
Speaker 2: But whether it was a bird or a.
Speaker 1: President, or a hippopotamus or whatever it might be that
Speaker 1: was using audio animatronics, the secret sauce was in that audio.
Speaker 2: They found that what they could do.
Speaker 1: Is create a tone on a cassette or on a
Speaker 1: magnetic real I should say, they could create a tone,
Speaker 1: and they used these little metal reeds that would connect
Speaker 1: to circuits. When the reeds would vibrate, it would close
Speaker 1: the circuit and allow a current to pass through. So
Speaker 1: if you made the reads vibrate, it would create a
Speaker 1: physical circuit that would end up making the pneumatic or
Speaker 1: solenoid system activate and thus be either on or off.
Speaker 1: Well on really, and once it stopped activating, it would
Speaker 1: be off. You could have your character open his or
Speaker 1: her mouth or move his or her head.
Speaker 2: Or whatever the action needed to be.
Speaker 1: And the reason the way they would make it vibrate
Speaker 1: is they would use a resonant frequency. So resonant frequencies
Speaker 1: are the natural vibrating frequency of any given material. If
Speaker 1: you have a glass and you tap the glass and
Speaker 1: it makes a little ringing noise, that is its resonant frequency,
Speaker 1: And if you are able to replicate that resonant frequency,
Speaker 1: then you will make the glass vibrate just by exposing
Speaker 1: it to that frequency. So if you create a sound
Speaker 1: that is of the same pitch as an object's resonant frequency,
Speaker 1: it will naturally begin to vibrate, and if you then
Speaker 1: amplify that signal, In other words, if you increase the volume,
Speaker 1: you will increase the amount of vibration that you're creating
Speaker 1: in that material. So again with the example of a glass,
Speaker 1: if you have a crystal glass, then it generates a
Speaker 1: particular tone when you strike it. If you replicate that
Speaker 1: tone and you amplify the signal enough, you can make
Speaker 1: the glass vibrate enough so that it shatters.
Speaker 2: 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 pitch perfect they are in
Speaker 1: creating that particular frequency.
Speaker 2: It has to be close enough. There's actually a small.
Speaker 1: Range where it'll work, but you need to be as
Speaker 1: close as possible to really get the maximum effect. It's
Speaker 1: much easier to do with amplification than it is unamplified.
Speaker 1: But that's the basis for audio animatronics. They had these
Speaker 1: little metallic reads that would be connected to the various circuitry,
Speaker 1: and each one would have its own specific resonant frequency.
Speaker 1: When you played the magnetic tape back, it would play
Speaker 1: tones at that resonant frequency for whichever particular action it needed.
Speaker 1: That specific metallic read would start to vibrate. Close that
Speaker 1: specific circuit, and then you get the motion. So if
Speaker 1: it's a figure that has several motions associated with it,
Speaker 1: let's say it's a bird that can turn its head,
Speaker 1: flap its wings, or open its mouth. That's three different motions.
Speaker 1: That means you would have three different circuits, with three
Speaker 1: different metallic reads, with three different resonant frequencies. So that
Speaker 1: way you could produce different tones and make the specific
Speaker 1: outcome that you wanted. Otherwise, every time you generated a tone,
Speaker 1: everything would go off and you would have chaos. More
Speaker 1: on that in a little bit. Again, this is a
Speaker 1: digital system, so there's no variation here. You could not
Speaker 1: have the bird turn its head halfway. It's always going
Speaker 1: to turn it as far as the animatronic is allowed.
Speaker 1: Whatever its freedom of movement is, that's where it's going
Speaker 1: to go to. So it still had limitations. However, by
Speaker 1: creating a specific circuit for every single motion, you could make.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Cheating, I guess is the right way of putting it.
Speaker 1: So, for example, one of the figures that Disney was
Speaker 1: working on for the New York World's Fair was Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 1: and in order to make all the different motions of
Speaker 1: the face the way they wanted to, they had to
Speaker 1: put in more components than could fit within the constraint
Speaker 1: of a human head, and they weren't. They didn't really
Speaker 1: have the option of scaling it up. They couldn't build
Speaker 1: Lincoln larger than human size and get the effect they wanted.
Speaker 1: They wanted to keep Lincoln at the dimensions that they
Speaker 1: felt were important for him to get the feeling across
Speaker 1: that 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 mister Lincoln. Although apparently, and at
Speaker 1: least some of the wigs that they designed.
Speaker 2: For the character.
Speaker 1: The bulge in the back of the head was noticeable, So,
Speaker 1: considering Lincoln's fate, that might have been viewed as being tasteless,
Speaker 1: but they were working within the constraints of a very
Speaker 1: new technology. Now, I mentioned that this approach had its
Speaker 1: limitations that you could only be on or off, and
Speaker 1: that they needed to have something with a little bit
Speaker 1: more of a spectrum of outcomes in order to get
Speaker 1: the effect that they really wanted. That approach required them
Speaker 1: to switch from pneumatic and solenoid systems to hydraulic systems.
Speaker 1: A hydraulic system uses liquid. Typically it's just water as
Speaker 1: its means of creating that same sort of mechanical force.
Speaker 1: You can't really compress water, as it turns out, so
Speaker 1: if you just put force behind water, it will push
Speaker 1: against whatever constraints you have it in. So if you
Speaker 1: put a good amount of water pressure in and you
Speaker 1: use valves to control where that water can go by
Speaker 1: opening and closing those valves, you can allow for some
Speaker 1: pretty powerful movements, including stuff that's strong enough to do
Speaker 1: something like lift and arm. Because the various pieces of
Speaker 1: machinery that Disney engineers were creating they weighed a good
Speaker 1: amount of they had a good amount of weight to them,
Speaker 1: a good amount of mass to them, and numatic ability
Speaker 1: on numatic systems weren't strong enough to move them, especially
Speaker 1: not smoothly. If you want to build a compressed air
Speaker 1: system that can move a significant amount of weight, chances
Speaker 1: are you're going to end up with an air catapult,
Speaker 1: which was not exactly what Disney was hoping for when
Speaker 1: he was thinking of these different designs. So imagineers switched
Speaker 1: to these hydraulic systems, and it also meant that they
Speaker 1: wanted to create more gradations of movement. They didn't want
Speaker 1: to just be on and off. They didn't just want
Speaker 1: to be open and closed, or left or right. They
Speaker 1: wanted to have some different abilities. They wanted to create
Speaker 1: a lot of different potential movements within the limbs of characters.
Speaker 1: One of the exhibits that they were working on for
Speaker 1: the New York World's Fair was the Carousel of Progress,
Speaker 1: which you can still see in certain Disney parks. The
Speaker 1: Carousel Progress features multiple scenes of a family through different
Speaker 1: eras of human history, including near future, where you get
Speaker 1: to see the innovation of progress, how systems have improved
Speaker 1: over time, to make our lives more convenient and enjoyable.
Speaker 1: And all of these various exhibits at New York had
Speaker 1: different sponsors, so Disney was partnering with other companies that
Speaker 1: had a vested interest in the public seeing this stuff.
Speaker 1: So there were branded materials inside Carousel Progress so that
Speaker 1: people would say, oh, you know what, I need to
Speaker 1: buy X kind of refrigerator because I want my life
Speaker 1: to be as convenient as it was for those robots
Speaker 1: we just saw. So in order to make this look convincing,
Speaker 1: they wanted the human characters to have very lifelike motions. Well,
Speaker 1: you can't do that with just the digital system, so
Speaker 1: they needed to go with an analog system. Analog means
Speaker 1: that you can have a variable element. It's not just
Speaker 1: on or off. That's what digital is. Either the signals
Speaker 1: going or it's not. Variable means you can actually create variations,
Speaker 1: and you do this through voltage. By changing the amount
Speaker 1: of voltage in a system and by increasing it or
Speaker 1: decreasing it, you could create different ranges of motion within
Speaker 1: a properly designed system. So that's what the imagineers started
Speaker 1: working on with both Lincoln and the Caresel Progress. They
Speaker 1: wanted to create more sophisticated systems that would allow for
Speaker 1: this sort of realistic motion, and by pairing the hydraulic
Speaker 1: systems with this analog voltage system, they could then create
Speaker 1: a more.
Speaker 2: Natural movement.
Speaker 1: Now, in order to encode that, they had to use
Speaker 1: varying tones on this magnetic tape, and to do that,
Speaker 1: they ended up having to use multiple tracks on a
Speaker 1: single piece of magnetic tape in order to conserve space,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you would have to have a reel for
Speaker 1: every single component that is controlled by some sort of
Speaker 1: hydraulic system, and that's just not feasible. So they ended
Speaker 1: up creating multi track systems where they could record I
Speaker 1: think up to twenty four eventually different tracks. But not
Speaker 1: all of those tracks were for the actual animatronic figure.
Speaker 1: Some of them were for theatrical elements like lighting cues,
Speaker 1: or whether or not certain products would open, like the
Speaker 1: refrigerator door might open, a drawer might slide out, an
Speaker 1: element in the fridge might tilt so people can get
Speaker 1: a better look at it. All of those were their
Speaker 1: own separate little circuits, and they all needed to be
Speaker 1: programmed into the audio animatronic reels, which again we're still
Speaker 1: using tones, So the sound department was still heavily involved
Speaker 1: in this. As you can imagine this complicated thing significantly
Speaker 1: once they got to the part where it was time
Speaker 1: to program the Carousel of Progress and the Great Moments
Speaker 1: with mister Lincoln, and I'll explain how some of that
Speaker 1: turned out in just a minute, but first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break and thank our sponsor. So when we
Speaker 1: talk about programming this system where you've got all these
Speaker 1: different tracks that control these different elements within an animatronic system,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that depending on how many figures you have,
Speaker 1: and how many points of articulation they have and what
Speaker 1: they need to do, these could be incredibly complicated. From
Speaker 1: a macro standpoint, each individual figure might be fairly simple,
Speaker 1: but taken as a whole, it gets to be enormously complex.
Speaker 1: One of the earliest ways that they experimented with programming
Speaker 1: was using silver paint. They used these old movieola movie
Speaker 1: editors that were designed to edit film, but instead of that,
Speaker 1: what they did was they took this tape and they
Speaker 1: would paint silver lines on it to create a circuit,
Speaker 1: and whenever the reading head would pass over the silver
Speaker 1: it would create an electrical circuit that then would send
Speaker 1: out as a command for the various action to happen.
Speaker 1: So let's say again that it's a parrot 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 2: So instead of saying.
Speaker 1: Oh, I need this mouth to be open for two seconds,
Speaker 1: you might say, oh, I need this to happen for
Speaker 1: two feet of film. So you would literally mark out
Speaker 1: the spot on the tape where the action needed to start,
Speaker 1: and you would mark out the spot on the tape
Speaker 1: where the action needed to stop, and you would just
Speaker 1: connect those two points with some silver paint, and then
Speaker 1: when it would read through the system, it would play
Speaker 1: back that way. When it would hit that point in
Speaker 1: the tape, the action would happen.
Speaker 2: So as long as you either.
Speaker 1: Had all of your tracks on one tape, and they
Speaker 1: could do up to six tracks on this method.
Speaker 2: 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 I needed to stop flapping its wings. But
Speaker 1: 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 toward 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 mister Lincoln, they started to run into
Speaker 1: some serious issues. The way they did this is they
Speaker 1: had editing machines and they had playback machines. The playback
Speaker 1: machines all they could do was play the magnetic tape
Speaker 1: back again. And this was they would call these machines dummies,
Speaker 1: because 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 mister Lincoln,
Speaker 1: the various speeches that mister 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 going to simplify for the purposes of this podcast,
Speaker 1: so that 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 in 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.
Speaker 2: So mister Lincoln might end up.
Speaker 1: Having a bit of a freak out on stage while
Speaker 1: delivering the Gettysburg address, and that just doesn't convey the
Speaker 1: stately nature that you want when you're trying to reenact
Speaker 1: one of the most iconic moments in American history that
Speaker 1: there is. Having Abraham Lincoln's eyebrows go crazy all over
Speaker 1: his face while he's talking might be a little distracting,
Speaker 1: so it required a painstaking process of editing. They would
Speaker 1: get the magnetic TI, they would run it through the
Speaker 1: system using one of these dummies. They would take notes,
Speaker 1: copious notes about everything that was going on with the
Speaker 1: performance of the audio animatronic show, in this case Great
Speaker 1: Moments with mister Lincoln, and anything that went wrong. They
Speaker 1: had to make note of whether it was a hand
Speaker 1: motion or an eyebrow, or the mouth wasn't moving in
Speaker 1: sync with the sound, or maybe the sound itself was
Speaker 1: at the wrong volume. Whatever the problem was, they had
Speaker 1: to make note of it, and then they had to
Speaker 1: take that same magnetic tape back and figure out how
Speaker 1: they could fix it. Sometimes they could fix it by
Speaker 1: making a couple of tweaks. Sometimes it required re recording
Speaker 1: an entire section, so it might be that you're recording
Speaker 1: a brand new section just to control the fingers on
Speaker 1: the left hand. That's how exacting this had to be.
Speaker 1: And again you had to make sure that you were
Speaker 1: synchronizing it with everything else, and it may be that
Speaker 1: you would find that one element 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'd say,
Speaker 1: all right, well, the track for the left hand needs
Speaker 1: to start at second number two point four, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: it's starting at two point eight, and because of that,
Speaker 1: the left hand is making gestures zero point four seconds
Speaker 1: after it's supposed to, and it looks ridiculous. You would
Speaker 1: have to go back and try and hand crank it
Speaker 1: to the spot where it needs to start and splice
Speaker 1: it back in that section that track back into the master.
Speaker 1: Worst case scenario scenario, you'd have to re record the
Speaker 1: master and just make sure everything is lined up in
Speaker 1: its new orientation based upon the notes you made To
Speaker 1: make matters even more complicated, they were using a sound
Speaker 1: studio that was busy during the day, so the only
Speaker 1: time the engineers could actually work on this project, which
Speaker 1: had to be done before the World's Fair opened, was
Speaker 1: at night. They would go to this recording studio at
Speaker 1: night that had its equipment on different floors, so they
Speaker 1: actually had to run cabling systems to go up and
Speaker 1: down floors so that they could connect the various parts
Speaker 1: that they were using in order to make these minute changes.
Speaker 1: It was an incredibly painstaking process to get the performance
Speaker 1: 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 pre recorded audio and
Speaker 1: give the experience that they intended to their audience.
Speaker 2: Programming this way took a lot of work.
Speaker 1: If you watch there's a Wonderful World of Color episode
Speaker 1: where they talk about the Disneyland presence at the World's
Speaker 1: Fair and the way the audio animatronics work. There's a
Speaker 1: point where Walt Disney walks up to one of his
Speaker 1: imagineers who's wearing this weird harness that is a control system.
Speaker 1: It's directly connected to the father character of Carousel of Progress.
Speaker 1: So when the guy makes a big motion with his arm,
Speaker 1: you 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 granularly
Speaker 1: than that. They could control a character directly using this method,
Speaker 1: but that was only really good for one on one
Speaker 1: digital puppetry, as in, you have a human controller actually
Speaker 1: manipulating the character at that very moment. If you wanted
Speaker 1: it automated, you had to go through this other, very
Speaker 1: painstaking process. And this is pretty much how they used
Speaker 1: audio animatronics. For the next several years, they would develop
Speaker 1: lots of different rides that used audio animatronic figures. Pirates
Speaker 1: of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, rides like that, where
Speaker 1: you had some sophisticated movement, something a little more advanced
Speaker 1: than just a static character turning. A lot of the
Speaker 1: dark rides in Fantasy Land are more primitive and don't
Speaker 1: need to be audio animatronic because there's no real articulation
Speaker 1: with the characters.
Speaker 2: They're kind of.
Speaker 1: Static and they can move up and down or turn
Speaker 1: left and right, but they don't have any facial motion,
Speaker 1: or their limbs don't really move in any meaningful way,
Speaker 1: as opposed to characters that say Pirates or Haunted Mansion,
Speaker 1: some of those have much more sophisticated movements and needed
Speaker 1: the audio animatronic system in order to do it. To me,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating that they were able to do all of
Speaker 1: this using tones, whether it was to just create that
Speaker 1: binary system or the analog system where you had the
Speaker 1: variable voltage that could create different types of movement. And
Speaker 1: I'm also fascinated by all the different people who worked
Speaker 1: on these systems. There were a ton of them who
Speaker 1: all contributed, and without them, these just wouldn't even be
Speaker 1: a reality today. They were able to make a huge
Speaker 1: impact at the New York World's Fair, and this really
Speaker 1: did cement Disney as being an innovative company, not just
Speaker 1: in movies and animation, but also in theme parks and experiences.
Speaker 1: It set them apart from their competitors. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the theming, which has always been one of Disney's
Speaker 1: strong suits, but the technology itself, the fact that the
Speaker 1: company was willing to be a pioneer in those spaces.
Speaker 1: So I find it one of the most interesting stories.
Speaker 1: And I love the fact that it also gives me
Speaker 1: the opportunity to touch on other elements of the mechanical
Speaker 1: and technological worlds, stuff like pneumatic systems, hydraulic system the
Speaker 1: concept of cams, the concept of solenoids. All of these
Speaker 1: elements are obviously components of the audio animatronic systems, but
Speaker 1: also it's fun to have that opportunity to just touch
Speaker 1: on those in this episode and to tell you, guys,
Speaker 1: you know what those were and how they were incorporated
Speaker 1: into this audio animatronic system. So the next time you
Speaker 1: ride one of these rides, think about all the technology
Speaker 1: that went into it and the fact that it's just
Speaker 1: magnetic tape that's giving all the instructions and not through
Speaker 1: any sort of computer program, but literally through sound.
Speaker 2: That the sound.
Speaker 1: Itself is what allows the circuits to complete, and it
Speaker 1: varies that voltage, and it allows mister Lincoln to stand
Speaker 1: up as he addresses you. And here's where we get
Speaker 1: to my story of a funny little Disney World fail.
Speaker 1: This was at disney World, not at Disneyland, and it
Speaker 1: was the first time my wife had ever been to
Speaker 1: disney World, and I was so excited because if you've
Speaker 1: been to Disney World several times, after a while, you
Speaker 1: know what to expect. And while it is still an
Speaker 1: amazing achievement to have built an amusement park so immersive
Speaker 1: and with such detail, and to then staff it with
Speaker 1: people who have some of the best customer service points
Speaker 1: in the world, that alone is amazing. But if you
Speaker 1: go with someone who has never been before, and you've
Speaker 1: been several times, there's a special kind of joy there
Speaker 1: because you can almost experience Disney World for the first
Speaker 1: time by vicariously experiencing it through your friend who had
Speaker 1: not been there before.
Speaker 2: 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 is,
Speaker 1: because again I've written most of these rides dozens of times,
Speaker 1: so for me, while I enjoy them, the special part
Speaker 1: had kind of worn off. Seeing it through her eyes
Speaker 1: brought it all back, and it was amazing. Then we
Speaker 1: go to the Hall of Presidents, and at the Hall
Speaker 1: of President's the curtains open, and if you've never been
Speaker 1: to the Hall of President's at Disney World. There's a
Speaker 1: point where curtains open up and you see all of
Speaker 1: the presidents of the United States. They're all there, Every
Speaker 1: single one who's ever sat as president is there, animated
Speaker 1: 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 introduce them one at a time. Well,
Speaker 1: mister Lincoln sits in a chair and then when it's
Speaker 1: 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 nod 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 down 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 giggle 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 beg 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 gesticulate while bent over, staring at the floor,
Speaker 1: and then it gets to his speech and the music
Speaker 1: swells and he starts to speak and move his arms
Speaker 1: more expressively, still bent at the waist, he does not
Speaker 1: stand up. It's at that point that a Disney cast
Speaker 1: member takes notice and rushes down and hits the stop
Speaker 1: button which closes the curtains, and says, mister Lincoln is
Speaker 1: not feeling very well, please check back again later today.
Speaker 1: And as we walk out, I know, we start making
Speaker 1: other jokes like is that my face on that penny,
Speaker 1: little jokes about Lincoln bent over for some reason. And
Speaker 1: it's unfortunate because that's my wife's first and first impression
Speaker 1: of the Hall of Presidents. That's her, that's the memory
Speaker 1: she associates with it. And I know for a fact
Speaker 1: that I can never take her to the Hall of
Speaker 1: Presidents ever again and have her take it seriously at all.
Speaker 2: Whenever it gets.
Speaker 1: The Lincoln, she's gonna get the giggles, and she's going
Speaker 1: to expect him to stand up and bend over at
Speaker 1: the waist and just stare at the floor for the
Speaker 1: rest of the day. So these animatronics didn't always work perfectly.
Speaker 1: Sometimes some part of the system or other would fail,
Speaker 1: and once that happens, then you get these sort of
Speaker 1: experiences where maybe part of the animation just isn't working.
Speaker 1: It could be something as simple as an arm is
Speaker 1: not animating the way it's supposed to, or it could
Speaker 1: be something a little more noticeable like a character is
Speaker 1: bent over and slumped down because they don't have the
Speaker 1: proper pressure to stand up.
Speaker 2: It probably was.
Speaker 1: Just a valve that had failed to open, so there
Speaker 1: was probably some circuit where it no longer was completing,
Speaker 1: and therefore the hydraulic system could not actually activate through
Speaker 1: the upper half of mister Lincoln, so he couldn't stand
Speaker 1: up tall. That's my guess as a armchair technologist taking
Speaker 1: a look at what happened.
Speaker 2: So that's it.
Speaker 1: That's how audio animatronics work. It is a really interesting system.
Speaker 1: I love the fact that it predates computer systems for
Speaker 1: theme parks. These days, you're going to find much more
Speaker 1: complicated programming.
Speaker 2: There's going to be microprocessors and characters.
Speaker 1: I don't know for a fact that the characters they
Speaker 1: added to the parts of the Caribbean Ride, for example,
Speaker 1: are more advanced versions. Like there's a Johnny Depp character
Speaker 1: that shows up three times in the new parts of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean Ride. There's a Barbosa character. Jeffrey Rush's character
Speaker 1: from the movies is also in that. I suspect that
Speaker 1: those are updated systems that are not running on the
Speaker 1: old audio animatronic system.
Speaker 2: But that's just a guess. I do not know that
Speaker 2: for a fact.
Speaker 1: They are certainly much more sophisticated than the original Pirates
Speaker 1: of the Caribbean characters were. I hope you enjoyed that
Speaker 1: classic episode The Wonderful World of Audio Animatronics. When I'm
Speaker 1: recording these intros, I'm actually getting ready to head down
Speaker 1: to Disney World in about a month. By the time
Speaker 1: you hear this, that will have already happened. But I
Speaker 1: always love experiencing the attractions that have audio animatronics or
Speaker 1: the variations of animatronics on them. I think it's an
Speaker 1: amazing combination of art and technology, and I just find
Speaker 1: it endlessly entertaining and fascinating and just I'm always so
Speaker 1: impressed with the technological innovations that made it possible to
Speaker 1: have sort of automated real world puppetry that can repeat itself,
Speaker 1: you know, indefinitely, although you do have to do repairs
Speaker 1: and maintenance obviously. It's just really one of those things
Speaker 1: that when you stop and really think about what's happening
Speaker 1: and what's going on, it gets really impressive, at least
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: I hope you.
Speaker 1: Enjoyed this classic episode of tech stuff. I hope you
Speaker 1: are all well, and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.