A history of the engineering marvels behind one of America’s most innovative and beloved entertainment experiences
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’s 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’s 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 (Princeton) and Performing the Gospels in Byzantium: Sight, Sound, and Space in the Divine Liturgy.
Betancourt will be in conversation with Bruce Holsinger, the author of Culpability, the 116th selection of Oprah’s Book Club and hailed by Oprah Winfrey as “a must-read for all generations.” His four previous novels include The Gifted School, a Book of the Month Club selection and winner of the the Colorado Book Award; The Displacements, the inaugural title in the United Nations Read for Action Book Club; and The Invention of Fire and A Burnable Book, historical novels set in medieval London. He’s also written many works of nonfiction, most recently On Parchment: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many other publications, and he has been profiled on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Here & Now, and Marketplace. He is the editor of the quarterly journal New Literary History as well as a frequent instructor at WriterHouse, a nonprofit in Charlottesville. He teaches English at the University of Virginia and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.