How Disney Built and Programmed an Animatronic President 97
An anonymous reader writes with this interesting look at how Disney created realistic animatronic figures in a time before programming languages and systems on a chip. Animatronics have powered some of sci-fi and fantasy cinema's most imposing creatures and characters: The alien queen in Aliens, the Terminator in The Terminator, and Jaws of Jaws (the key to getting top billing in Hollywood: be a robot). Even beloved little E.T.—of E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial—was a pile of aluminum, steel, and foam rubber capable of 150 robotic actions, including wrinkling its nose. But although animatronics is a treasured component of some of culture's farthest-reaching movies, it originated in much more mundane circumstances. According to the Disney archives, it began with a bird.
Among the things Walt Disney was renowned for was bringing animatronics (or what he termed at the time Audio-Animatronics) to big stages at his company and elsewhere. But Disney didn't discover or invent animatronics for entertainment use; rather, he found it in a store. In a video on Disney's site, Disney archivist Dave Smith tells a story of how one day in the early 1950s, while out shopping in New Orleans antique shop, Disney took note of a tiny cage with a tinier mechanical bird, bobbing its tail and wings while tweeting tunelessly. He bought the trinket and brought it back to his studio, where his technicians took the bird apart to see how it worked.
Among the things Walt Disney was renowned for was bringing animatronics (or what he termed at the time Audio-Animatronics) to big stages at his company and elsewhere. But Disney didn't discover or invent animatronics for entertainment use; rather, he found it in a store. In a video on Disney's site, Disney archivist Dave Smith tells a story of how one day in the early 1950s, while out shopping in New Orleans antique shop, Disney took note of a tiny cage with a tinier mechanical bird, bobbing its tail and wings while tweeting tunelessly. He bought the trinket and brought it back to his studio, where his technicians took the bird apart to see how it worked.
Re:Let me be the first to say it. (Score:4, Interesting)
while we may have not investigated the patent situation in this case the important question is did Mr. Disney do so or did he just take?
Wind-up automatons are older than the American Revolution. There was quite the fad for them, to the point where people were scamming by creating fake automatons such as Maelzel's Chess Player, which hid a chess-playing dwarf. Incidentally, Maelzel and Beethoven designed one of the first "Moog Synthesizers" and Beethoven wrote "Wellington's Victory" to showcase it. This unit was truly automated. The drawing automaton in the movie "Hugo" is an example of another popular model.
I believe that when Disney first started loading up on complex automata, they were "programmed" by tall stacks of cams. More recent models replaced some of the mechanics with compressed-air tubing, which allowed more flexibility than simple linkages. I haven't seen one lately, Presumably there are better options now.
I did see one of the air-based systems in the programming room of a company that manufactures such things. They had it hooked up to a piano keyboard. I think it used MIDI to talk to the actual solenoid valves.