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.

To imag­ine our­selves into the time of Leonar­do da Vin­ci, we must first imag­ine a world with­out such things as heli­copters, para­chutes, tanks, div­ing suits, robots. Yet those all exist­ed for Leonar­do him­self — or rather, they exist­ed in his imag­i­na­tion. What he did­n’t build in real life, he doc­u­ment­ed in his note­books, leav­ing behind mate­r­i­al for appre­ci­a­tions of his genius that would con­tin­ue half a mil­len­ni­um lat­er. One such appre­ci­a­tion appears above in a new video from Lost in Time, which ren­ders his inven­tions using the kind of 3D ani­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy even the par­a­dig­mat­ic Renais­sance man couldn’t have begun to fore­see.

This helps us see Leonar­do’s work from the per­spec­tive of his con­tem­po­raries, and to feel how sur­prised they would’ve been to encounter a seat­ed knight who stands up, opens his visor, and reveals that there’s no one inside the armor. That sort of thing might even amuse us here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, but accus­tomed as we are to see­ing machines that move around under their own pow­er — and now, see­ing them take more cred­i­ble humanoid form every day — we would­n’t be inclined to cred­it it with any kind of life force.

In the four­teen-nineties, how­ev­er, man­pow­er was what peo­ple knew, so they instinc­tive­ly looked for the man. Leonar­do, too, con­ceived most of his inven­tions to employ human mus­cle, the study of whose inner work­ings enabled him to make the gears and pul­leys of his “robot­ic” knight move its limbs real­is­ti­cal­ly.

Accord­ing to the plans in one of Leonar­do’s note­books, his “aer­i­al screw,” involv­ing a linen sail wrapped around a wood­en mast, would need four men run­ning in cir­cles around a revolv­ing plat­form, which would the­o­ret­i­cal­ly cause the mast to rotate and the whole con­trap­tion to lift into the air. As designed, it would­n’t have been able to take off, but in 2019, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land sci­en­tists mod­i­fied it to work suc­cess­ful­ly in minia­ture, as a kind of drone. As shown in the video, that’s not the only one of Leonar­do’s unre­al­ized inven­tions his intel­lec­tu­al descen­dants have tried out for them­selves. It seems that none have yet attempt­ed to con­struct his near­ly 80-foot-wide cross­bow, whose use on the bat­tle­field required the efforts of a dozen sol­diers, but then, that’s prob­a­bly all to the good.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

Explore the Largest Online Archive Explor­ing the Genius of Leonard da Vin­ci

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.

Ancient Rome nev­er had an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion. Grant­ed, cer­tain his­to­ri­ans have object­ed now and again to that once-set­tled claim, ges­tur­ing toward large heaps of pot­tery dis­cov­ered in garbage dumps and oth­er such arti­facts clear­ly pro­duced in large num­bers. Still, the fact remains that Ancient Rome nev­er had an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion of the kind that fired up toward the end of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, but not due to a com­plete absence of the rel­e­vant tech­nol­o­gy. As explained in the new Lost in Time video above, Romans had wit­nessed the pow­er of steam har­nessed back in the first cen­tu­ry — but they dis­missed it as a nov­el­ty, evi­dent­ly unable to see its pow­er to trans­form civ­i­liza­tion.

That’s just one of a vari­ety of exam­ples of gen­uine high Roman tech­nol­o­gy fea­tured in the video, many or all of which would seem implau­si­ble to the aver­age view­er if insert­ed into a sto­ry set in ancient Rome.

Take the set of auto­mat­ic doors installed in a tem­ple, trig­gered by a fire that heats an under­ground water tank, which in turn fills up a pot attached to a cable that — through a sys­tem of pul­leys — throws them open. (When the fire cools down, the doors then shut again.) This was the work of the Greek-born inven­tor Hero of Alexan­dria, who would bear com­par­i­son in one sense or anoth­er with every­one from Rube Gold­berg to Leonar­do da Vin­ci.

It was also Hero who came up with that ear­ly steam tur­bine, called the aeolip­ile. He came along too late, how­ev­er, to take cred­it for the “self-heal­ing” Roman con­crete pre­vi­ous­ly much-fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the mate­r­i­al of build­ings like the Pan­theon, “still the largest unre­in­forced con­crete dome in the world.” Anoth­er inven­tion high­light­ed in the video comes from Alexan­dria, but well before Hero’s time, and even before that of the Roman Empire itself: the accu­rate water clock engi­neered by Cte­si­bius, whose under­ly­ing design remained influ­en­tial in the Roman era. Hydraulic pow­er was also used in Roman mills, which made pos­si­ble com­plex fac­to­ry sys­tems, even in a civ­i­liza­tion that nev­er reached an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion prop­er. And if a Roman fac­to­ry work­er got thirsty at break time, maybe he could drop a coin into one of Hero’s wine vend­ing machines.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Ancient Romans Built Their Roads, the Life­lines of Their Vast Empire

The Amaz­ing Engi­neer­ing of Roman Baths

The Roman Colos­se­um Decon­struct­ed: 3D Ani­ma­tion Reveals the Hid­den Tech­nol­o­gy That Pow­ered Rome’s Great Are­na

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Ancient Roman Dodec­a­he­dron: The Mys­te­ri­ous Object That Has Baf­fled Archae­ol­o­gists for Cen­turies

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

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.