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Disney's Animatronics: A Living History

Defunctland

3,971,489 views

In the 1960s, Walt Disney carried the torch of one of humanity's oldest pursuits, the search for mechanical life. The result was Audio-Animatronics, a new breed of robots designed to mimic life.

In this first part of a two-part exploration into living machines in Disney Parks, Kevin explores the history of automatons and the initial development of Disney's Animatronics.

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Major Sources and Additional Reading:
Edison's Eve by Gaby Wood: https://www.amazon.com/Edisons-Eve-Ma...
Persistence of Vision #6/7 by Paul F. Anderson (Out of Print)
Marc Davis In His Own Words by Pete Docter and Christopher Merritt: https://a.co/d/2enP2SF

Table of Contents:
0:00 - Chapter One: The Sixth Day
19:53 - Chapter Two: Talking Heads
39:46 - Chapter Three: Methods of Control
01:00:40 - Chapter Four: The Resurrection of Abraham Lincoln
01:20:05 - Chapter Five: Pandora's Box

This video is adjacent to Five Nights at Freddy's, so I am allowed to include it in the description for keyword reasons. Freddy Fazbear.

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20 Comments

@RoninRedacted 10 months ago

>Makes Flute Player
>Uses Real Skin on the Hands
>SEES NO PROBLEM WITH THAT
>Is named "The New Prometheus"
>Makes a different guy
>Is so disgusted he gives no details

What a guy

@coolethanlegoguy 1 year ago (edited)

It is impossible to feel disappointed with the infrequency of this channels uploads when the quality of the actual episodes are so high. Between the professional visuals and the significant research, Defunctland videos are so clearly a labor of love

@diidelphiis 1 year ago

It seems a little macabre to make your resurrection of Abraham Lincoln live forever inside of a theatre when you think about it.

@j8kethewizz 10 months ago

I came here after the Living Characters video and I'm delighted to see that animatronics flirting uncomfortably with their audience dates all the way back to the Zhou Dynasty.

@ZaGorudan 1 year ago

"We need technology to make our little animatronic birds sing, I'm gonna go ask the government for their nuclear missile codes."
-Walt Disney, probably

@Jack_Siesko 9 months ago (edited)

3:24 its comforting to know that even thousands of years ago, that people's first idea for an animatronic was "what if they flirted with guests"

@emolgana 1 year ago

are u telling me i went my whole life thinking "audio animatronics" were called that because they made sounds and not because THEY'RE CONTROLLED WITH SOUNDS?? my mind is genuinely blown

@Expelsword 1 year ago

Born too early to see truly life-like automatons.
Born too late to see Walt Disney fire a gun.

@yaayitshope 1 year ago

the “they felt it’d be redundant to create a chinatown when san fransisco and los angeles also have one” and then cut to california adventure is the funniest cut in this whole documentary

@giselle9230 1 year ago

9:02 me thinking “Ok, as a woodwind player, even with this cool mechanism, there’s no way mechanical fingertips could block air properly and play unless they were squishy like real fingertips.”

9:07 DEAR GOD

@bucca2 1 year ago

“But the most frightening feature that it had: was game.” we are SPRINTING right out of the gate gang

@b0tsbby 1 year ago

35:15 is killing me. Walt Disney the pioneer of racism park thinking “My park isn’t racist enough guys”

@vespa-onna 1 year ago (edited)

i love that the reactions to Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln at the time range from "This is a clear overstepping of a line, with this twisted parody of a life that has been well past over acting as a desecration of existence itself. Walt Disney may think he's God, but he's merely a false prophet, puppeteering a corpse to sing and dance for us." to "oh holy shit was that abraham lincoln?"

@BradsGonnaPlay 1 year ago

If DefunctLand’s documentaries have taught me one thing, it’s that American technology is most rapidly advanced by 3 entities:
-The Military
-NASA
-…… Disneyland???

@larrydupp3988 1 year ago

Its such a common joke every Defunctland video has an extreme opening for something small, but an actual history of the automaton starting back to the ancient egyptians I think is the farthest this channel has ever gone. This is gonna be an absolute classic of a documentary

@Lunageldia 10 months ago

I got so into the history of automatons intro section that I was somehow startled when twenty minutes in we cut back to Disney.

@suly5836 1 year ago

I love the constant pointing of the flute atomaton using REAL SKIN on the hands.

@cecinepasunme 1 year ago

Kevin wrote "a winkin', blinkin', Abraham Lincoln", leaned back in his chair smugly, and murmured, "Yep, that's right."

@celedhion 1 year ago

Not me being surprised by the cliffhanger to part two, when I already knew that I voted for the video to be split into parts and saw that choice was winning

@tonyblitz1 1 year ago

I think it's fascinating how the controversy of the Lincoln animatronic partially mirrors the digital necromancy of Peter Cushing's likeness in Rogue One.

The spirit of Walt and his desire to do away with "fussy actors" seems alive and well.
For worse.