For young chil­dren today, just as it was for gen­er­a­tions of their pre­de­ces­sors, noth­ing is quite so thrilling about their first vis­it to a Dis­ney theme park as catch­ing a glimpse of Mick­ey Mouse, Don­ald Duck, or anoth­er beloved char­ac­ter greet­ing them in real life. Cre­at­ing this mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence requires noth­ing more advanced than a well-trained employ­ee (or “cast mem­ber,” as the com­pa­ny puts it) in an over­sized cos­tume. Nev­er­the­less, effec­tive though it may be, it was­n’t part of Walt Dis­ney’s long-term vision. A true man of the Space Age, he looked ahead to the time — sure­ly not all too far in the future — when he could instead fill Dis­ney­land with reli­able, untir­ing, per­fect­ly life­like robots in the shape of ani­mals, human beings, or any­thing else besides.

In the event, Dis­ney only lived long enough to see his peo­ple cre­ate a mechan­i­cal ver­sion of Abra­ham Lin­coln, whose abil­i­ties were lim­it­ed to stand­ing up from his chair and deliv­er­ing a short speech. By the time that “audio-ani­ma­tron­ic” res­ur­rec­tion of the Unit­ed States’ six­teenth pres­i­dent was first pub­licly shown at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, its rumored devel­op­ment had already set off a num­ber of eth­i­cal and aes­thet­ic con­tro­ver­sies. Yet it worked so well — at least after its ear­ly, embar­rass­ing tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties were ironed out — that some atten­dees assumed that they were look­ing at an actor dressed up as Lin­coln, and even won­dered if the poor fel­low got tired doing the same rou­tine all day long.

This sto­ry is includ­ed in the video above from Defunct­land, a YouTube chan­nel that focus­es on amuse­ment-park-relat­ed fail­ures, espe­cial­ly those con­nect­ed with the Dis­ney empire. The Great Moments with Mr. Lin­coln show was a suc­cess, as was the all-robot­ic Hall of Pres­i­dents that opened at Dis­ney­land in 1971, a few years after Dis­ney’s death. But try as it might — and spend as much as it will — the com­pa­ny has yet to real­ize the vision that came to obsess its founder: in effect, that of cre­at­ing tech­no­log­i­cal life. Of course, Dis­ney was hard­ly the first to enter­tain such Promethean ambi­tions: mankind had already been try­ing to pull that trick off for quite some time, as evi­denced by the efforts, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, of minds like Leonar­do da Vin­ci and the medieval poly­math Al-Jazari.

To explain Dis­ney’s long, frus­trat­ed quest to cre­ate arti­fi­cial human beings — or mice, as the case may be — requires a good deal of his­tor­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and even philo­soph­i­cal con­text. That’s just what Defunct­land cre­ator Kevin Per­jur­er does, and then some, in the doc­u­men­tary that com­pris­es the ear­li­er video from last year and its just-released sec­ond part above. Over its col­lec­tive run­time of six hours, he goes deep into a ques­tion of great inter­est to Dis­ney enthu­si­asts: what, exact­ly, has pre­vent­ed the most ambi­tious enter­tain­ment com­pa­ny in the world from per­fect­ing its automa­tons, even here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry? But then, as those of us of a cer­tain age who have fond mem­o­ries of the rel­a­tive­ly crude likes of the Haunt­ed Man­sion and Pirates of the Caribbean (to say noth­ing of  non-Dis­ney oper­a­tions like Chuck. E Cheese) under­stand, per­fec­tion isn’t always the way to a child’s heart.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Medieval Ara­bic Man­u­script Fea­tures the Designs for a “Per­pet­u­al Flute” and Oth­er Inge­nious Mechan­i­cal Devices

The Armored-Knight “Robot” Designed by Leonar­do da Vin­ci (cir­ca 1495)

200-Year-Old Robots That Play Music, Shoot Arrows & Even Write Poems: Watch Automa­tons in Action

The First-Ever Look at the Orig­i­nal Dis­ney­land Prospec­tus

Dis­ney­land 1957: A Lit­tle Stroll Down Mem­o­ry Lane

A Map of the Dis­ney Enter­tain­ment Empire Reveals the Deep Con­nec­tions Between Its Movies, Its Mer­chan­dise, Dis­ney­land & More (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.