AMA: Dr. Roland Betancourt on Disneyland and Automation
Today marks the 71st anniversary of Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, which defined the modern theme park as we know it. As such, it feels like the perfect opportunity to host an AMA on this beloved site of American culture, particularly through my own areas of expertise in the history of technology and automation—topics that are as pressing and important today as they were back in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s.
A little about myself: I am an historian whose work has largely focused on the Byzantine Empire, but my latest book is about Disneyland and automation. I have written books on the transmission of ancient learning on sight and the senses, on the use of Gospel books in the rituals of the Byzantine Church, on questions of identity in the premodern past, and on secret keeping across the military and social strata of the empire. As an historian of the Greek-speaking, medieval Roman Empire, my work has firmly looked at the intersection of histories of science, philosophy, and technology with the production and experience of art.
Like many of my colleagues working on the Middle Ages, I do not view art as something static on the wall of a museum or gallery, but as a totality of objects working with one another to produce a complete experience that deploys all of the senses and seeks to immerse viewers in an otherworldly experience. So my work on Byzantine art is not just about icons or illustrated manuscripts, but on how texts, images, architecture, music, and performance all interact with one another to unsettle time and space.
Therefore, when I turned to looking at the modern theme park in my research, I brought to it my distinctly medieval sensibilities to think about the interaction of art, architecture, technology, and operation—from technical patents to employee training manuals.
My most recent book, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth, tells the story of how Disneyland adopted, modified, and aestheticized technologies once relegated to the factory floor and the assembly line to create the parks we know and love today. It is a story about what those in the industry would call “ride control systems.” But it also traces how Disneyland deployed these technologies in the period when the very term “automation” was coined—internally, at Ford in 1947 (more here), but bursting onto the scene as a national panic in 1952 (more here). In addition to the book, I have published scholarly articles on Disneyland and postwar cybernetics, as well as on nuclear dispersion studies and the methods used to identify Disneyland’s site. Overall, I am interested in what I have called the “aesthetics of automation” in the theme park and beyond.
The scope of this AMA should be primarily focused on the history of Disneyland from the perspective of its technology and automation, particularly from its inception to the early 1990s—though I am always happy to offer thoughts on current tech and developments in theme parks more broadly. There are a ton of books out there about Disneyland and the Disney theme parks more generally. Bloggers, vloggers, and content creators of all sorts love to explain the history of the parks, including a series of popular documentaries produced by the Walt Disney Company on Disney+. But no one has written a history of Disneyland’s tech and engineering. So I want to keep the focus of this AMA dialed in just so that I can dedicate the appropriate time to all those awesome unanswered and unasked questions, and get the chance to share with you what has made my research experience so unique!
I am happy to answer questions about the history of Disneyland’s technology, automation systems, and to share stories of the seven years of archival research that went into this book! While historians often present the neat narratives of their finished stories, I think it’s important to reveal the labor, challenges, surprises, and realities of the research process that contoured the narratives we tell.
Finally, while this goes without saying: I am in no way affiliated with the Walt Disney Company and all of this comes from my own research and reflects my professional assessments and opinions on the primary sources I have looked at.
Go ahead, ask me anything!
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