WEBVTT - Rerun: TechStuff Moments with Mr. Lincoln 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.560 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:17.400 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:23.120 I love all things tech. And it is Monday, May 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.240 Memorial Day, which means it's holiday here in the United States, 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.920 and because of that, I am actually taking the day off, 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:35.360 and so rather than having a new episode for you, 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:38.720 this is an episode that originally aired on a different holiday, 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:42.479 the fourth of July, back in two thousand eighteen, and 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:47.680 it is titled tech Stuff Moments with Mr Lincoln because 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:50.760 I think of Memorial Days being like the beginning of 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:55.600 the summer season, and for me, summers were often coupled 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:58.600 with trips to Disney World because I lived in Georgia, 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:02.560 Florida was not that away, and my sister and I 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:08.039 were fanatics. So sit back, enjoy this episode, and on Wednesday, 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:12.160 We're going to continue our story about the very complicated 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:15.720 evolution of Warner Medium, and I'll chat with you a 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:20.119 little bit at the end of the episode. This episode 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:23.640 is to publish on the fourth of July two thousand eighteen, 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:27.120 and here in the United States that date is treated 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:31.720 with some reverence as we consider it Independence Day. And 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.240 back in seventeen seventy six, the Continental Congress representing the 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:39.360 thirteen colonies of the America's declared those colonies a new 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.640 nation called the United States of America. But that actually 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:47.640 happened on July two, seventeen seventy six. John Adams was 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:49.320 convinced that that was going to be the day we 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:52.240 all celebrated. As it turned out, we decided to do 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:54.400 it on July four, because that was the day the 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:59.000 Declaration of Independence, that famous document outlining America's arguments for 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:03.200 seceding on the British Empire was dated, was dated on 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:08.240 July four, seventy six. Also, um, despite what popular musical 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:11.560 numbers would have you believe, it's mostly likely that that 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.840 most of the representatives did not sign the Declaration of 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.960 Independence that day. They probably did it on August two, 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:22.040 seventeen seventy six. But never mind all that, The fourth 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:25.760 of July is when the US celebrates Independence Day. Whenever 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:28.680 it happened doesn't matter. It just matters when we celebrate it. 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:31.560 And in the past on tech stuff, I've tried to 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:36.160 time vaguely related topics to that date. Whenever we've published 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:38.840 on or around the fourth of July. We've talked about 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:44.320 the tech of say Independence Day, the movie, or like Fireworks, 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:47.480 and today I want to talk about a Disneyland attraction 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:51.760 called Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, because I feel that's 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:56.160 sort of quintessentially American, even though Lincoln was our sixteenth 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:59.240 president and governed in the nineteenth century, not the eighteenth century, 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:03.760 but never America, right, And you know, they're talking about Disneyland, 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:07.880 something that is truly a piece of Americana, and Great 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:11.320 Moments with Mr Lincoln is located on Main Street, USA. 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:17.840 That was Walt Disney's monument to the classic Americana, a 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:21.839 small town almost like an America that never was an 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:26.520 idealized America. So I figured it was a good topic 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:29.400 to cover in this episode. Now I have done an 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:32.640 episode about audio animatronics in the past, and I'm going 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:35.120 to be covering some of that ground again here. But 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:39.520 we're specifically looking at the development of the Mr. Lincoln 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.120 attraction in this episode, so I'm not going to focus 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:46.040 too much on the other stuff. I'll have some stuff 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:48.200 to say about some of the predecessors, because that's important 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:51.000 to understand in order to figure out how Mr Lincoln worked. 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.200 So if you're unfamiliar with the attraction Great Moments with 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:57.160 Mr Lincoln, here's kind of how it goes. You would 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.720 go into a building, it's the Ground and Opera House 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:04.360 on Main Street, USA and Disneyland, and you would see 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:07.920 a little pre show piece before going into a theater, 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:11.000 and you'd sit down. You get another little film, and 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.040 then a screen would lift up and you would see 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:19.600 seated center stage, the audio animatronic figure of Abraham Lincoln, 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:23.520 and then Abraham Lincoln stands up out of his chair 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.760 and speaks to the crowd. And the content and the 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.200 technology of the attraction have changed several times throughout the years. 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.359 In fact, these days you wouldn't call it audio animatronics 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.440 at all. It's the only reason anyone would refer to 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:39.719 it that way is just because that's what the technology 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.240 had been called for years and years and years. But 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:47.680 the current incarnation at Disneyland isn't really audio animatronic. It's 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:50.280 not working on that same system. Now, before I talk 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:52.640 about how it works, let's go into the history of 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:55.880 audio animatronics and the development of this attraction in particular, 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:59.080 because I think it's pretty fascinating to learn about not 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:02.120 just the technology side, but the business side of this. 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.000 So first we got to go back to nineteen That's 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:09.000 when Walt Disney took his family on a vacation in Europe, 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:13.479 and on that trip, Disney got enamored with some clockwork 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:17.880 mechanical toys, including a mechanical little bird. You would wind 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.960 it up and it with tweet and flap its wings 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:23.159 and would move in a pretty convincing way. And he 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.159 was inspired by that to take these toys back to 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:30.000 his his folks over at Walt Disney Studios and say, 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:34.400 you know, we've we've animated stuff on film. We've taken 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.120 cells and we've drawn pictures on them, and we've taken 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:40.760 photographs of that and turned it into a film where 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:43.840 it looks like the inanimate is moving around. What if 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:45.719 we did something similar, but we did it in the 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:48.760 real world. We brought it into the three dimensions around us, 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:53.159 and make make this idea sort of a grander scale. 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:55.960 We're gonna take these little mechanical elements that I've seen 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:58.719 here and make it something much bigger. So he returned 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:01.800 to California, he brought ideas to his team of developers 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:05.280 that we now today would call imagineers. That's a portmanteau 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:09.480 of imagination and engineer, And he said, what if we 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.719 were to make something like this but bigger? So in 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:15.279 nineteen fifty one he gave an assignment to two of 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:21.520 his employees, Roger Braggy and Wattle Rogers Uh. Roger Braggy 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:25.479 was born in nineteen o eight in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:29.880 he attended a vocational school and trained in machine shop work. 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:32.680 He would relocate to Los Angeles and he found a 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.039 lot of work in the film industry. He even developed 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:39.680 technologies like a rear projection system for major movie studios, 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:42.200 and in nineteen thirty nine he got an invitation to 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.920 join the Walt Disney Studio as a precision machinist. One 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:48.560 of his first jobs he had was to install the 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:54.400 multiplane animation camera in the studio's brand new Burbank location. Now, 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:57.120 this was a camera that consisted of not just a 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.679 film camera, but also a massive frame, and that frame 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:04.440 could hold multiple layers or planes of an animated cell. 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:07.919 So you might have a foreground image, you might have 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.480 a main image, you might have a couple of background images, 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:14.480 and they would all be held at different heights relative 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:18.000 to this camera lens, and then by moving the frames 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:21.480 either closer to or further away from the camera, you 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.720 can make elements within that animated scene appear to move 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:28.000 at different speeds and give this illusion of depth. So 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:31.640 it's almost like you're zooming in through an animated scene. 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:35.960 And that was something that was really really innovative. Well, also, 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:39.200 I should mention that Disney did not necessarily invent that 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.640 one of his former employees more or less invented this 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:47.480 approach of eyeworks, but that's a different story. Disney made 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:51.200 extensive use of that technology when his studio made snow 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:55.360 White in the Seven Dwarfs. By nine, Broggy had been 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.200 promoted to the head of the studio machine shot, and 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:01.440 when Walt started thinking about building a theme park, Braggy 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:05.760 was one of his go to engineers for attractions. Rogers, meanwhile, 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.800 was born in nineteen nineteen in Stratton, Colorado, and he 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.400 studied art at an institute in Los Angeles. He became 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:17.560 proficient in lots of different areas of art, including sculpting, 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.000 so he joined the Walt Disney studio also in nineteen 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.840 thirty nine, along with Braggy and Early on, he worked 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:29.360 primarily as an animator on films like Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella, 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.360 and Peter Pan. He also created props and managers for 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:35.280 the studio's live action films, and like Braggy, he would 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:37.719 be invited by Disney to work on attractions for the 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:41.520 upcoming Disneyland theme park. So Walt Disney comes up to 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:43.720 these two guys and he says, I want you to 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:49.320 build me a figure approximately nine inches tall of a 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:53.200 man that can move around like a human can, so 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.960 sort of like a puppet, but not puppeteered by any 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:01.040 person in real time. It would be an entire mechanical 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:04.000 system that would be able to do this, and it 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:07.079 was called Project little Man, so as to build a 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.280 nine inch human figure that could move and and move 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:12.600 its mouth as if it's talking, and be able to 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:16.960 synchronize that with an actual voice track. And essentially he 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:19.160 just wanted to bring that concept of animation into the 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.720 real world. Buddy Ebsen, the actor who would become Jed 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:26.120 Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies, would come into the studio 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:29.360 and he did this whole song and dance routine in 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:31.720 front of a screen that was just a bunch of 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.400 grid lines so that the animators had a reference they 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:38.000 could work from. And Buddy would later say of Disney, quote, 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:40.040 he took me to a room where there were these 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:43.240 seven little guys with aprons and thick glasses working on 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:46.160 a contrivance that pulled wires, and a little mechanical man 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.280 that moved his arms, legs, head, and mouth end quote. 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.600 So the two engineers lead this team. They used cables 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:57.400 and cams and hinged limbs to create sort of a 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.280 rudimentary muscle and skeletal system for this little figure, and 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:05.720 the machinery would end up being underneath this little figures stage, 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:09.000 so the whole thing was actually quite large. The figure 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:11.040 was only nine inches tall, but the whole system was 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.480 really big, and it wasn't really that dissimilar to a puppet, 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:18.840 except again, the puppeteer was mechanical, not a human, and 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:24.760 it was it was. It kind of worked, but it 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:27.760 wasn't practical. Later, when it came time to look into 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:31.439 making audio animatronics for theme park attractions, Broggy would actually 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:33.760 go to All Disney and say that we should really 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.079 create larger life sized figures. It would actually make it 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:40.079 easier because you could fit a lot of the elements 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.240 inside the figure itself instead of having to find places 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:48.040 in the environment to hide all the mechanisms that would 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:51.440 make the figure move. So this would serve as the 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:54.240 genesis for a new field of innovation in Disney, which 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:57.960 was audio and animatronics. The term is defined as being 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:02.959 or consisting of a lifelike electro mechanical figure of a 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.319 person or animal that has synchronized movement and sound. Although 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:11.040 to be fair with the audio animatronics, it's synchronized to 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.560 sound and it's not the sound you hear. Ha ha. 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.400 So Walt Disney has this idea. He says, you know, 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.480 we've got Disneyland. We're opening that up. What have we 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:25.160 created a restaurant. Let's make a Chinese restaurant. And in 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.960 the lobby of this Chinese restaurant is a figure of 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:32.400 a little, old wise Chinese man who will dispense words 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.400 of wisdom like Confucius. But it's not an actor. It's 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.120 actually gonna be a mechanical man. And the team got 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:41.240 to work designing that kind of a figure. And according 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:43.640 to Rogers, he said, quote you could always tell who 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:45.760 was working on the job because they never looked at 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:47.959 your eyes when you were talking to them. They were 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.640 always looking at your mouth end quote. They did eventually 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:54.320 build a mock up of a head for this figure, 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:57.000 but they didn't get much further than that. Disney had 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:00.720 decided to drop that idea for something else, and that 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:03.520 idea would eventually be the Enchanted Teaking Room, which we 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.400 will come back to in just a minute now. Disneyland 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:11.880 open on July sev In nineteen fifty nine, Walt Disney 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:14.520 was working on the design of a new land that 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.280 would go in Disneyland. He was already thinking about how 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.000 to build it out more and originally this was going 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:23.040 to be called Liberty Street. It would run parallel to 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.800 Main Street and would feature an attraction called One Nation 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.480 Under God. In this attraction, the audience would be treated 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.400 to a view of audio animatronic figures of every single 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:38.600 president up on stage. Every president would be life sized, 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:43.440 would have lifelike motions, and would be animated. So he 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.319 tasked his engineers to get to work on that concept, 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:49.680 and they had to start somewhere. So the team chose 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:53.000 Abraham Lincoln as their first figure, and they were able 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:55.480 to get a copy of a life mask that Lincoln 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.080 had made back before he was president. They got a 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.120 copy of this, and a sculptor named Blaine Gibson, who 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.600 would go on to create most of the faces for 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:07.160 Disney Animatronics, would use that as a guide to create 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:11.000 the mask for the Lincoln animatronic. By nineteen sixty one, 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:14.240 they had an early build of the Abraham Lincoln figure, 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.400 and it had some limited mobility and expressions. It could 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:22.160 be controlled or manipulated if you prefer, live, by an 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:26.760 actual UH engineer, so it wasn't automated yet. So it 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:29.480 was not the finished product, but it was apparently quite 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:32.960 impressive even early on, because in nineteen sixty two the 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:36.080 team received a visit from a guy named Robert Moses. 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.160 Robert Moses was a public official from New York City 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:44.880 who held numerous positions, none of them publicly elected, and 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:50.080 had become incredibly influential. He was responsible for massive projects 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.120 in New York and some of them were controversial, and 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:55.600 he was in charge of getting New York City ready 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:59.240 for a World's Fair to be held there in nineteen 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:05.000 sixty four. So Disney introduced Moses to the audio animatronic 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.360 Abraham Lincoln. An engineer controlled Lincoln to make him stand 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.360 up and reach out his arm to shake Moses hand, 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:15.040 and Moses was so impressed they declared the World's Fair 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:19.560 would absolutely have to feature this technology, which would require 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:21.800 the team to step up their work if they were 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.600 to meet that particular deadline. How did they do it, Well, 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:28.680 I'll tell you in just a moment, but first let's 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:39.960 take a quick break to thank our sponsor. So the 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:44.280 team had a goal get a show featuring an audio 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:48.280 animatronic Abraham Lincoln ready to go for the New York 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:53.480 World's Fair in nineteen sixty four, that was thirteen months away. 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.800 A few other components outside the technology fell into place 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:00.280 to make this possible. Because the tech part was just 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:04.320 one aspect, another part was where is the money going 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:07.920 to come from? So part of that piece of the 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:11.840 puzzle was from the Illinois Commission. They had decided that 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:15.520 the theme for the Illinois pavilion at the World's Fair 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:19.640 would be the Land of Lincoln. The provisional chairman for 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:23.880 this commission was a guy named Fairfax Cone. So Moses 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:27.400 tells Cone, you gotta go and see what Walt Disney 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:30.160 is working on out in California. It's gonna make you 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:34.440 flip your lid. And Cone goes out there and ends 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:38.200 up meeting with Disney. He sees the Lincoln figure for himself, 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:42.000 he too, is really impressed. He would then recommend to 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.280 the Permanent Commission chairman, who was a Lincoln historian named 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.920 Ralph Newman, that he incorporate the Abraham Lincoln figure in 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:54.160 the Illinois Pavilion. So Newman would end up going out 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:56.240 and meeting with Walt Disney and he would see the 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:58.560 Abraham Lincoln figure and he too was blown away, and 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:02.080 he said, yes, we have absolutely need this. So the 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.520 next step was convincing the Governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner, 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.200 that this, in fact was something that the state should 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:11.680 sponsor in order to get that out to the New 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:15.520 York World's Fair. So Otto Kerner met with Walt Disney 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:18.320 and he was convinced that the Lincoln figure would be 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:21.640 a great addition to the Illinois Pavilion. But the expense 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:26.760 of the project was pretty high. Originally Disney said a 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.080 million dollars and that was kind of a figure that 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.480 was out of nowhere, but that was the point the 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:36.880 starting point for negotiations. Eventually, the Disney company would say 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:39.880 we can go as low as six hundred thousand dollars, 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:42.920 and we could divide that up over two years, so 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:45.520 the first year would be three fifty thousand dollars and 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.080 the second year would be two hundred fifty thou dollars. 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:54.960 But that was kind of putting Illinois in a tough position. 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:59.040 Kerner was having to negotiate not just with Walt Disney, 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:03.080 but with Moses as well in the World's Fair, because 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:08.240 Moses was demanding that any exhibitor at the World's Fair 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:11.680 had to go through him and his departments for things 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:15.880 like power and set up and tear down and all 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:19.160 these other things that had fees associated with them. So 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:21.880 the state was going to have to pay two different 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:24.560 groups an enormous amount of money in order for this 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:30.000 to happen. But Newman knew that Moses was really impressed 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:34.200 by this Lincoln figure, and Newman and Disney together met 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:37.560 with Moses talked to him about this stuff. They were 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:41.680 trying to convince him to uh to lower some of 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.240 the World's Fair requirements in order to make this happen. 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:48.119 And Newman in fact even let it slip that he 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:50.040 was going off to meet with some people over the 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:53.439 United Nations to make it sound like things were super 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:58.520 important on his end, and eventually Moses decided to renegotiate, 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:03.400 and so they gave several concessions to the state of Illinois, said, 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:05.480 you're not gonna have to pay these fees. These fees, 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:07.800 you're going to have a maximum amount of five thousand 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:10.760 dollars for something that could have cost you ten times 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:14.960 as much, and even agreed to a two hundred fifty 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:19.439 thousand dollars stipend to help fund the Lincoln attraction, because 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:23.080 that's how impressed Moses was of it. So Disney had 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:28.480 cut that deal where the nineteen sixty four rental fee 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:31.479 for Lincoln would be three fifty thousand dollars, and then 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:33.760 there was the option for the state to extend that 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:38.240 through nineteen six two hundred fifty thousand dollars. After Illinois 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:40.840 got that two d fifty thousand dollars stipend from the fair, 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:43.720 that men they got Lincoln for the low low price 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:46.639 of a hundred grand for that first year, and it 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:51.600 also marked the one and only time in the World's 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:56.240 Fair history that the fair subsidized and exhibit. The state 0:18:56.320 --> 0:19:00.720 gave Disney the official news in August nineteen sixty three, 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:04.240 so nineteen four World's Fair was right around the corner. 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:08.040 It was super fast for them to get this turned around. Meanwhile, 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:10.800 the team was really hard at work to try and 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:14.119 put the show together. Much of the groundwork for audio 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:18.080 animatronics had already been laid by an electrician named Lee Adams, 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:21.639 who created the giant squid featured in the film twenty 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:24.680 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. A lot of people point 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:29.600 at that as being the first true animatronic figure under Disney, 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.320 although of course that wasn't used as an attraction. It 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.480 was used in a movie. The tentacles of the massive 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:39.720 squid in that film were actually kind of like balloons, 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:42.160 so you would use a pneumatic system to pump air 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:46.280 into the tentacles. That would cause them to unfold, and 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:49.639 allowing the air to escape would cause the tentacles to 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:53.040 curl back up, so controlling the airflow would allow you 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:57.600 to puppeteer this giant squid. Disney Imagineers had also already 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:02.720 created a theme park attraction used audio animatronic technology at 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:06.360 that point. The Enchanted Tiki Room, which I mentioned earlier, 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.919 was the first attraction to feature audio animatronics, and it 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:14.399 opened at Disneyland in nineteen sixty three. It was originally 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:17.359 going to be that Chinese restaurant, then they decided to 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:20.239 change it to a Polynesian themed restaurant, and then they 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.239 decided to eventually drop the restaurant angle entirely and just 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:26.320 making an attraction. So how does it actually work well? 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:30.280 With the Tiki birds, everything was pretty much binary. Every 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:34.640 single element, every moving element had a neutral position. So 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:36.639 let's say that we're looking at one of the four 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:41.439 hosts that are macaus, and you're looking at the beaks 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:46.359 of those macaus. The neutral position would be a closed beak. 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:50.600 So if nothing is going to the the that particular bird, 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:54.359 it's beak should be closed. A pneumatic system, which is 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:57.960 one that uses compressed air to do work, would activate 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.320 a solenoid would actually act fate and allow compressed air 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:04.080 to move through to force the mouth to an open position. 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:07.240 So if you were to do that manually, you would 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:09.520 pull a trigger and that would open up a valve 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:11.639 and that would cause air to flow through the system 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:14.359 to the appropriate element, causing the beak to open. But 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:18.240 how was this done automatically, not with an actual human 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:22.880 operating the thing? Well, the secret was an ultrasonic tones 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:27.160 recorded onto magnetic tape, like like the kind of tape 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.400 you would use in a real too real tape machine 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:33.399 or even a cassette player. Disney used tape that was 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:35.879 an inch wide when it was first doing this, and 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.399 that inch wide tape that they used in in the 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:43.080 Enchantiqui room had fourteen tracks that you could lay on 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:46.520 that one inch of tape, and you could put up 0:21:46.520 --> 0:21:49.280 to sixteen signals on a single track. So you would 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:54.480 record these ultrasonic frequencies on the tape and when played back, 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:59.399 they would cause metallic reads to vibrate in various relays. 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:03.520 When the reds vibrated, they would close a circuit. That 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:08.600 circuit would send an electric current to a solenoid valve 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:11.560 that would allow air to flow to the appropriate feature 0:22:11.720 --> 0:22:15.440 like that mccause beak, causing it to open. And because 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:19.000 the system worked off these audio cues, Disney called the 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:23.080 tech audio animatronics. Even though the audio in question is 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:27.320 inaudible to humans, right, we don't hear in those ultrasonic frequencies, 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:31.680 So you could record an audible track that's within human 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:35.600 hearing on that same tape, and that way you synchronize 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:39.800 the ultrasonic frequencies that give the commands to the various 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:44.280 elements in the animatronic figure with the audio track, and 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:47.439 that way you can have the birds sort of. I 0:22:47.480 --> 0:22:49.440 was gonna say lip sync, but I guess it's more 0:22:49.480 --> 0:22:53.480 like beak sinc to the audio track you recorded. Some 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:58.639 of the audio animatronic technology Mr. Lincoln dependent upon was similar. 0:22:59.000 --> 0:23:02.919 They had the pneumatic switches for certain parts of the 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:07.480 Lincoln animatronic, but only for the smaller features, because pneumatics 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:09.960 would not supply the power needed to move some of 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.840 the larger elements, like arms. A person's arms are pretty 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:18.200 big and the the air would not be sufficiently powered 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:21.000 to move them. Also, if you did use air and 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:24.840 you did use enough compression to make the arms move, 0:23:24.880 --> 0:23:28.040 they would shoot around like like like Lincoln was some 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:31.040 sort of crazy karate monster. That would not work very 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:35.440 well for the attraction. So instead they put hydraulic systems 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:38.640 in place for some of the larger elements. Hydraulics use 0:23:38.920 --> 0:23:42.600 liquids and they use pressure to move the liquids around, 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:45.560 and the liquids act as a source of mechanical force. 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:48.880 So it's similar to pneumatics, but With hydraulics, you can 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:52.359 do a lot more. You can move much heavier things, 0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:54.439 and you can do so in a controlled way with 0:23:54.480 --> 0:23:57.200 the right amount of pressure. So in theory, Mr Lincoln 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:01.040 would move according to the ultrasonic recordings on that magnetic tape, 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:04.160 and the playback would cause the reeds to vibrate, completing 0:24:04.200 --> 0:24:07.160 circuits and forcing either air or liquid through the relevant 0:24:07.160 --> 0:24:11.960