When you think of Disney World and the Walt Disney Company, typically the first thing you think of is Mickey Mouse. Next you may think of Minnie, Donald, Goofy, your favorite movies, and of course, some of those toe-tapping tunes that you won't be able to get out of your head for the next 10 weeks. Because of this, we typically perceive the Walt Disney Company to solely be an entertainment enterprise and while that isn't too far from the truth, it also isn't ENTIRELY accurate.
Yes, Disney has been bringing us fun, cheery, and overall delightful movies, TV shows, and shorts since the 1920s, but they have also been at the forefront of technology since that time and continue to be to this very day, even if we may not necessarily know it.
Back in the day, before the world became subject to the second World War, a young man set out to start his own cartoon company after coming up with the concept of Mickey Mouse on a train ride after learning he had lost his first ever successful cartoon character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This man's name was Walt Disney and his goal is what revolutionized cartoons and our everyday technology forever.
He began with something called a multi-plane camera in 1937. This camera has multiple layers so that different parts of an animation could be moved at different speeds and different times, which added depth to cartoons.
For example, if you're walking down a country road at night and you look up at the moon, the moon will not change size. In traditional animation, when you "moved down the road" (or zoomed in) the moon would end up changing size. With the use of this camera, however, the moon could be put on a different plane at a different distance from the camera lens, and be manipulated to stay the same size, as if you were actually traveling down the road.
He didn't stop with animation though. He was also fascinated with robotics and animatronics, almost to a fault. Once he went on vacation with his wife, Lillian, and they bought two small, robotic birds. Walt took one of them to his office, reverse engineered it to figure out how it worked, and then went to his development team and had them make a whole bunch of these new and improved little birds, even making sure they looked like they were breathing. These birds ended up filling the Tiki Room, a very famous attraction in the parks. He couldn't stop with birds though, oh no.
In fact, he premiered a show called "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" at the World's Fair in 1964, which feature an auto-animatronic Abraham Lincoln. The show was promoted as one starring a robot and naturally people flocked to it to see how good a machine could really be. Well, the machine turned out to be so good and so life-like that people began throwing ball bearings at it because they thought it was just a really good actor and wanted to know if they could get him to go "off script."
Walt Disney was a very innovative person and today his message of progress and innovation still lives on. In fact, one of the most famous and catchy tunes you will hear around Walt Disney World is a song from his famous World's Fair attraction, The Carousel of Progress, the message of which is that our society is always evolving and changing.
Walt had some crazy ideas for how the world should progress too. Epcot, the now famous part of Walt Disney World, was originally supposed to be a living, functioning community of tomorrow-- in fact the name Epcot actually stands for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow" and it would include a large "Vacation Kingdom" in the center and branch out into offices, homes, and even have a big global center so that people could share their cultures with each other.
Today, that still lives on. Walt Disney World continues to be on the cutting edge of technology with things like the MagicBands that connect up reservations and fast-passes to one, simple place, and even larger and less widely known things. Epcot actually houses a huge research facility that specializes in agriculture. In fact, they work with the US Department of Agriculture to develop better ways of growing foods that use the land more efficiently while still yielding the best possible quality of food.
You wouldn't necessarily think that Walt Disney and his company have had such a long track record of producing ground-breaking technology, but that just goes to show you the power of imagination, creativity, and intuitiveness.
And to think, it was all started by a mouse.
