When Disneyland opened to the public in 1955, it demystified the hidden world of factory automation through its extraordinary new attractions. In this fascinating book, Roland Betancourt tells the story of how the visionary engineers and designers at Disney transformed the technologies of the postwar assembly line into an entertainment experience unlike anything the world had ever seen.
Disneyland and the Rise of Automation traces the origins and evolution of these technical innovations during the theme park鈥檚 first three decades in operation, exploring how engineers reimagined the systems and machines of industrial manufacturing and the military. The magnetic tape used to test ballistic missiles was repurposed to animate the talking macaws in the Enchanted Tiki Room. Programmable Logic Controllers, widely used on automotive assembly lines, brought to life the spectacular rides of the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Space Mountain. Betancourt shows how these and other attractions helped to allay fears about automation and job displacement in 1950s America. Along the way, he situates Disneyland鈥檚 remarkable creations within a broader history of the technologies that increasingly order and construct the world around us, from the Fordist factory to artificial intelligence.
Essential reading for anyone interested in engineering, corporate histories, or popular culture, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation invites us to consider how technology and the logic of automation become integrated into our lives through entertainment.
Roland Betancourt is Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Irvine, and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. His books include the prize-winning Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages (快色直播) and Performing the Gospels in Byzantium: Sight, Sound, and Space in the Divine Liturgy.
"Richly supported by advertisements, comics, TV documentaries, magazine articles, technical drawings, and more, Betancourt's history contextualizes the public鈥檚 changing attitudes toward automation and how its gradual popularity affected鈥攁nd devalued鈥攈uman labor, specialization, and unions. . . . The parallels between automation history and today鈥檚 anxiety about AI do make for a timely read."鈥�Booklist
“This groundbreaking, deeply researched book explores how Walt Disney and his designers aestheticized midcentury automation and computer science to create Disneyland and transform its offerings. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the development of theme parks and how they reshaped postwar America.”—Todd James Pierce, author of Three Years in Wonderland: The Disney Brothers, C. V. Wood, and the Making of the Great American Theme Park
“Betancourt offers a phenomenal, long-overdue examination of how Disney’s early team of designers reverse engineered automated assembly-line technologies in designing the park’s earliest attractions, diving deeply into the archeology of Disneyland’s control systems and revealing their original functions in the real world. This is a book about Disneyland unlike any other and is not to be missed.”—Tom K. Morris, Imagineer and Disney historian
“Deeply researched, brilliantly written, and wonderfully illustrated, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation is a tour de force. Betancourt outlines the key role automation has played in the history of theme parks at large and Disneyland in particular, filling an important gap in US postwar and Disney history. This is a must-read for scholars and fans alike.”—Sabrina Mittermeier, author of A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks
“Like a Mickey-shaped, chocolate-covered ice cream bar, this book offers a fused history of industrial automation and theme-park entertainment in the twentieth century. Betancourt has elaborately researched both topics, individually and together, and even the most experienced Main Streeter or Assemblyliner will learn much from it.”—Ian Bogost, author of Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games
“An original look into the crucial connections between automation and entertainment.”—David A. Mindell, author of The New Lunar Society: An Enlightenment Guide to the Next Industrial Revolution
“A brilliant intervention in the history of industrial capitalism, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation brings together histories of culture and technology to powerfully lay bare the operating principles of twentieth-century modernity. This is a groundbreaking work.”—Alex J. Taylor, author of Forms of Persuasion: Art and Corporate Image in the 1960s
“Disneyland and the Rise of Automation is a wholly original approach to Walt Disney’s reinvention of the amusement park. Roland Betancourt offers an exceptional characterization of the park as an industrial plant, its guests as consumer goods, and its methods for moving people and objects as efficient as a well-oiled machine.”—Robert Neuman, author of From Hollywood to Disneyland
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