

Walt Disney - Hardware Hacker - replicatorblog
http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/04/walt-disney-hardware-hacker/

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froo
Just to give a little more depth to Walt as a hardware hacker. He invented and
patented the multiplane camera.

<http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT2201689>

This gave the Disney films much of their richness that other studios could not
match.. unfortunately the Disney studio stopped using this technology after
Walt's death in 66 because of expense... and it showed.

He was also an innovator and is responsible for the technique known as
"rolling" whereby the animators disk was actually turned upside down so that
animators could roll through the drawings instead of flip through them as was
customary at the time.

Example of the technique linked below

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFFq_-XCfq4>

This helped with the inbetweening process because an animator could quickly
flip back and forth through the movements of a character, or even through
every X frames of a character to judge it's movements more precisely, which
made the Disney films look more realistic.

He also innovated by spending lots of resources on research, with the studio
coming up with the "12 principles of animation" which are still relevant, even
today. They had this stuff figured out in the 30's

He was also a fan of iteration and always expected more from his animators.
For example, did you know that Dopey from Snow White, Jiminy Cricket from
Pinnochio and Thumper from Bambi were not in the original scripts for those
films? They are among the most popular characters from those classic films.

I could go on and on about many of the things that he did and many of the
values he held which you would find in many of the great CEO's, eg Steve Jobs
or Bill Gates.

Needless to say, Walt was a hacker in every sense of the word. Nothing was
unachievable in his mind.

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replicatorblog
Froo, you are absolutely right. He was also very involved in the audio
animatronics for Disneyworld creating the robotic Abe Lincoln driven by
magnetic tape. and the multi-plane camera was an amazing invention for its
time (the shots still hold up too). I was just surprised about the trains
because even with those inventions you mentioned he was the "idea" man and the
quality control czar. With the trains he was actually turning the handle on
the mill. Great comments, and thanks for the links!

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froo
_he was the "idea" man and the quality control czar_

Not to mention the taskmaster. Disneyland was built in a year from
groundbreaking to opening day.

There is a quote I've read (which I'm essentially paraphrasing now because I
can't find the exact quote) where a journalist asked Walt how they managed to
construct Disneyland in 365 days.

Walt simply replied "We worked all of them"

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replicatorblog
I'm just reading a book now called "Realityland" which is the story of how
Disney World and Epcot were built after Walt's death. Kind of sad to see how
far from the original vision Epcot is. Walt had some pretty interesting ideas
on urban planning that prefigured modern schools of architecture like "New
Urbanism" <http://www.newurbanism.org/>

If you are a Disney fan, Realityland is well worth a look.

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froo
I am definitely an early Disney film fan (from an animation perspective).

Another book you might read is actually written by two of Disney's "Nine Old
Men" called "The Illusion of Life" (Pixar actually did an homage to them in
_The Incredibles_ ) and it talks about not only the specific techniques that
they created, but also the attitude of the studio in the early days.

It's actually interesting to read the history on something like Apple and also
Disney and see the many similarities between the two companies in their early
days.

Early Disney was definitely a startup that had a lot of the hacker values.

Walt was definitely on another plane of thinking. My favourite quote of his
is:

 _“I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never
satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination”_

\- Walt Disney

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replicatorblog
Very cool, is the homage your referring to when there are the two old men
talking and say something like "Thats the way you do it, old school" and the
other says "No school like the old school."

I always wondered why they were in that scene, but that would explain it.

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froo
Yep that's exactly who they are. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%27s_Nine_Old_Men>

In fact, to tie it all together with the original topic, Ollie Johnson's
lifelong hobby was building steam trains. He was one of the main influences
for Walt Disney wanting to build his own trains.

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noonespecial
I'd graduate Walt from Hacker to Maker (with the capital M) for the train
project. WD, like Bill Gates is another example of an excellent hacker/maker
that was really worthy of much praise and respect having their greatness and
coolness occluded by the giant faceless behemoths their companies became.

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replicatorblog
noonespecial,

Great point, I think history is going to be much kinder to Gates than the
present. It is funny, Steve Jobs probably has the best product instincts of
any executive of the last 50 years but never really "made" anything. As far as
I know he didn't actually do anything technical at Apple, it sounds like his
Atari days were pretty light too. Hard to argue with genius though.

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joe_bleau
Maybe I'm just a Jobs-hater, but it's always astonished me that someone so
much a part of the initial personal computer revolution couldn't program. (
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Shut_Up.txt&topic=Microsoft&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date)
)

~~~
replicatorblog
It is astonishing, also not a designer, but the best hardware designs by far
are Apple. I think if Gates is the archetypal Programmer as CEO then Jobs is
the archetypal "Product Manager" as CEO. He may not be able to implement, but
he sure knows how to write a spec.

