Those people in the video were definitely actors. Because I’m positive the one man played an IRS agent in an episode of theGoldenGirls (also a Disney production).
OH MY GOD YOU'RE RIGHT! I just looked that up and saw the guy's name is "Richard Penn". Apparently he was also in Inspector Gadget (1999) and Doctor Dolittle (1998) on top of that Golden Girls appearance. This guy was no "Worldkey designer" - he works for the dang IRS!!! th-cam.com/video/-z2eTVtlYxo/w-d-xo.html (starts at 25 seconds)
It’s almost as if it was an INTRAnet…. The foundations of the current internet have been around since the 70s. Only when HTTP and SSL were developed in the 90s could the internet become useful for wider use.
My dad was a computer scientist with Sperry, when we visited Epcot, we were treated to a VIP lounge with snacks and drinks, then a private tour of computer central. I was very little and can barely remember, but I did love the snacks and soda :)
I'm reminded of something Cathode Ray Dude said: they knew where the future was going, just not how to reach it. This system does a remarkably good job of simulating the functions of a device that wouldn't exist for another 30 years using much more primitive technology.
@9HighFlyer9 Processing power and usable memory. A big part of why systems like Worldnet used prerecorded/prerendered videos was that computers of the time didn't have anywhere near enough RAM to store the assets needed for real-time rendering or the VRAM to store what was actually being sent to the screen, at least not at decent resolutions and color depths. That was a big part of why early computer graphics had very few pixels and colors.
Opening-day World Key cast member here. Thanks for sharing this! - At 0:54 - That's "Jaribel" (Forgot her last name). At 0:56 is Kerry Cook. Such wonderful memories.
@@kerry2368 What was the best question *you* ever got? :D Probably 100 marriage proposals a day from various obnoxious tourists. I struggle to imagine the public were better behaved than they are today.
I remember using Worldkey in the 80s in my early 20s. Set up dinner reservations at the Mexican pavilion via a 2-way video call. This brought up a lot of nostalgia and made me feel a bit old. I've, just by happenstance, had the fortune to be exposed to some really cutting edge technology at various times in my youth starting back in the early 70s. It was a wild time, everything was simpler.
I remember Worldkey very well! It was a big part of my experience at Epcot when I was there on the third day that Epcott was open - October 3rd 1982. I spent a lot of time playing with it and using it to make a restaurant reservation. At the time it was incredible technology! I was very impressed with it.
Same. I was there as a child in 1983 or 4 and when I got lost in the park my first thought was to go to the World Key (which I had already played with for hours) booth between “Future-land” and “The World” and connect to a live cast member to help find my parents. It worked!
The taking off the glasses move in the "documentary" is great. The director clearly had one fun move to get the top tier performances from everybody. And I love things like "After a lot of discussion, we decided the system had to be fast." Like as if there was one rogue in every conference room for months insisting it had to be slow, and fastness was a major focus of debate. What if it's too fast? Wouldn't some users prefer an arbitrary delay, so it looks like the machine is thinking harder?
You'd be surprised how much that technique is used today to make things feel more secure. I'm pretty sure I used it in a project demo for university where me had the program wait for a short time to seem like it was doing more.
> "After a lot of discussion, we decided the system had to be fast." Speaking as a professional software developer, I don't agree that this was a vacuous decision. In engineering projects, you have three things you can prioritize: speed, quality and efficiency. You get to pick two and only two from that list. You never get all three at once. It's part of the fundamental nature of engineering that something always has to be sacrificed. Anyone who disagrees with this isn't a real engineer: they're some kind of manager or con man. So if Disney's engineers tell me they decided to prioritize speed, my next question will be what they chose to sacrifice to achieve speed. Saying they chose speed means they accepted a compromise either to quality or to efficiency. My guess is that they sacrificed efficiency on this project considering that they were willing to throw such expensive hardware at the problem, making a massively inefficient system that nevertheless delivered fast, high quality results despite costing a fortune in cutting edge equipment. The whole vibe of Epcott is that it's OK for this experimental technology to be extremely inefficient as long as it's fast and reasonably good.
The BBC had a very similar system in place when they were promoting their "Domesday Project" to archive living life of someone in the 1980s. They displayed it in a lot of theme parks, events, and even schools using a BBC Micro hooked up to a LaserDisc player. But yeah, it's essentially the same tech that was in arcades with games like Dragon's Lair.
As soon as I came to the part that showed WorldKey to be LaserDisc based, _The Domesday Project_ was the first thing that came to mind. Arguably both seem to be the same general idea, except Domesday setups were all standalone with the controlling computer (A BBC Master) in immediate proximity, rather than being remote and connected over a network. 👍 Thinking about the menu system on that (Where one „walked“ around a virtual „gallery“) I wonder if Disney/ATT had considered that a possibility for WorldKey too, though perhaps it wouldn't have been appropriate for a resort information kiosk. ⏳
@@dieseldragon6756 The Domesday Project discs were more than just simple LaserDiscs, though. They used a Philips-developed technology called LV-ROM which could not only store analog video but also up to 2GB of data per disc which was recorded along with the analog video. There are still two complete and working Domesday workstations, one at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge and another at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.
You're following me Larry! xDD I forgot the other channel you follow that I do but, you do have great taste :) It might have been some industrial investigation channel or something. Of course I'm subbed to you too.
@@dieseldragon6756 I was obsessed with that virtual gallery disc, especially the painting you could climb into that lead to a block of flats, and you could walk around that guy's flat. Been hoping for years someone can emulate it online.
3:02 Futurism started dying with Horizons. It is gut wrenching actually. Hearing about Walts last days and how he spend his final hours dedicated to futurism, it really hurts to see it in the state it’s in now. Just telling the story, you feel something. So please, keep telling us stories so we can keep futurism alive. What we have now, is becoming lost.
That was the one thing that really interested me when I went to Epcot as a kid (I think I was around 12). The hope for the future and emphasis on innovation was part of what made me interested in technology. But now, even with a degree in computers, there really isn't a lot of innovation. I'm currently using an 8 year old laptop and at any other time in history, using tech that old felt mostly incompatible with what was available, yet I can use everything I need to. Perhaps a bit slower than something new, but the differences are minimal. This also happens to be the model of MacBook with the funky touch screen instead of function keys, but that never took off (and I see why). There's not much real innovation, just gimmicks that never seem to be as thought out or useful as they may sound. Innovation and hope are what made Disney feel magical to me, compared to any other amusement park. I don't think I'd go back now because so much of it seems like generic stuff with Disney characters on it.
@ There is innovation out there in the IT/IS world, but it has slowed down and its way more taxing to get at now. After Thunderbolt 3/4 I dont see any progress with Chipsets because Microsoft just takes away your resources like an older brother who is being a jerk. Mission Critical MUST BE DONE NOW!!!!!!! Updates, Datamining, “Anti-Malware Executable”, Network Mining, Ad-gated Servers, file name mining, and a bunch more things that have a higher process priority than anything you are “allowed” to do with your computer you paid for. You need to have a python script or powershell script just to wrangle your pc so it dont just take away resources you are currently using, even with DNS based IP blocks. It’s the most demotivating thing I have ever seen on a PC. I have been on a computer since before I could construct a sentence and its a horrible time to be a fan of technology. None of the GUIs are intuitive or even fully functional half the time, and when they are, the software engineers move things around to “hide the bugs under the map” rather than fix them. Back to Thunderbolt, the promise of an External GPU was/is pretty exciting and a game changer for having a real mobile warrior box. Even with 10 year old hardware, a TB eGPU will outpace an off the shelf cutting edge mobile workstation with a Quadro for no other reason than electrical power consumption. 2013 was a fantastic time for computers, so dont undersell that. I get the same feels for that time as walking into Innoventions at Epcot at 11. Just a wave of synergy being injected right into the frontal lobe by excitement. So much excitement, Randy Savage cant even say excitement with adding another syllable to the word. The closest thing in recent memory is working with something like the Atmel Atmega32u4 and making custom HID(s) and biofeedback/biorhythm devices. For for example a controller than watches your heart rate and blood o2 and keeps you motivated while your at your desk restarting servers at 2:30. (Am or PM, just a sketchy time) Or warns you if you’re getting too worked up and gives you haptic feedback so the customer doesnt notice. None of it profitable money wise, but worth your moonlight hours. Hopefully we are about to turn a corner with computers where we can get excited again, rather than having to struggle to just get through starting up our box for the day and all the surprises and frustrations that seems to come with….
As I understand, Walt wanted Tomorrowland to be more like a futuristic, but totalitarian city folk could live at, rather than just another part of the park.
Nowadays futurism would mean to build completely self-supplying skyscrapers those not only generate their own energy from sun and wind but also recycle their waste by 3D printers into goods and produce their own food through vertical farms for a completely redneck-free sustainable life. This would be the spirit of a genuine planetary spage-age civilization.
I'm so glad someone finally made a video going into worldkey, it's a aspect of Epcot that became so obscure, that no one has really covered it until now, and if they did, it was a small video
I've always felt a fundamental flaw of EPCOT, or any theme parks with future world type attractions, is that it takes a decade between beginning planning and having the exhibits operational. So right there you are already somewhat behind the times. Add to it that theme parks are very resistant to updating an changing existing rides and showcases. So many of these things end up hanging around 20-30 years. Either we've already surpassed the future timeline or the world has changes so much that the futuristic thing you are showing will come to pass in a very different way. I always feel that way about the end of Spaceship Earth.
It seems like the end is what changes in that ride more than anything else. I feel like the end of that ride is the late 1970s between that scientist with the fro and a guy working on a "personal computer" (supposedly that is Steve Woz and the first Apple Computer) along with the '70s car that's in there. Anything beyond that is just guessing the future. Since that ride is 42 years old now, that sounds about right. There really isn't room for much else unless something is taken out (like that starfield).
In Disney parks fandom they call this "The Tomorrowland Problem." Any kind of effort to imagine a realistic near future becomes obsolete quickly, and it's almost worse when the predictions come true than when they don't, because now you've got an exhibit of something that is completely mundane. Disney thought they'd cracked it with Epcot because these exhibits were all being made with funding from corporate partners who would be willing to foot the bill on frequent refreshes as history marched on. But it didn't work out that way--most of the corporate partners bailed early on, and even when they hung on or were replaced by someone else, they didn't necessarily have deep enough pockets to keep reworking the attraction. The one that really did hang on and keep adequately funding things was General Motors, oddly enough, which is why World of Motion became Test Track and that's now on its second major refresh.
Yhea but you can also back on retro-futurism. People may not be interested in seeing "the future" but there are definitely a lot off people that will be interested in seeing the past´s vision of ""the future" which i think its why some old atracctions like spaceship earth are mantained, they are just that iconic despite being outdated.
@@ciclon5682 Nowadays futurism would mean to build completely self-supplying skyscrapers those not only generate their own energy from sun and wind but also recycle their waste by 3D printers into goods and produce their own food through vertical farms for a completely redneck-free sustainable life. This would be the spirit of a genuine planetary spage-age civilization. And regarding future achievements that unlikely can be reached in our lives, think of time machines, teleporters and warp drive spaceships.
Is there a word for that distinct late 70s/early 80s aesthetic with the brown tones, heavy synth and old tech? Like there's vaporwave for late 80s/early 90s, but that particular era is like a drug to me. This video is like putting it right into my veins. I need more.
It's basically the precursor to what we have now so in that sense this video doesn't really do it justice. Capacitive, resistive, etc. still work by getting X and Y coordinates and plotting them to a definition for the current display. The fact that they used something that wasn't built into the glass itself shouldn't detract from its significance.
Using a touch screen is still cool to this day. Also cool when you start up an app and a feature just changes a bit because of last nights update. Love the future.
@@80s_Gamrthe iPhone wasn't revolutionary because it was a touch screen. It was revolutionary because it was a touch screen in a phone size case. The touch screen part isn't the crazy part.
@Sammysapphira Who said anything about iPhone and them being "revolutionary"? I was just talking about tech in general, for which I've lived through all of these generations as a technician. Personally I'm no fan of iPhones... but that's a different story, lol.
Went through my subscriptions list yesterday for the first time in ages, and said "Wow, 8 months already? Hopefully there's something new in the works." Didn't know I had these powers, but I'm not complaining. Awesome to have you back.
The computer division of Sperry may be gone, but the company is alive and well providing nondestructive testing services for railroads. Elmer Sperry invented many, many things.
i actually bought a bunch of the laserdisc players from this from property control in the spring of 2000. About 200 of them were sitting there, $20 a piece
Essentially, it was a giant, and primitive, version of one of those "Encyclopedia" CD's for computers, that were all the rage back in the 90's. I think that every parent bought one for their computer for their kids to use to do their homework with.
And there was even a way to update those CD encyclopedias: one could download smaller database patches from a BBS or the internet. You could occasionally find these patches on various CDs bundled with computing magazines.
@@negirno That was one major advantage (or the music industry may say disadvantage) to CDs is that they came in rewriteable versions. Although I was surprised going back and playing some old PC games to see how some of them sort of used a hybrid approach of accessing some files on the PC, and some stuff on the CD, much like how I've edited photos directly from the SD card today.
@@jlbeeen I don't recall rewritable CDs ever being used for a commercial product like this, they were basically just for end user use. Even then, they were basically just read-only CDs that could be completely erased and reused than truly read/write media. You burned what you wanted onto the disc and if you wanted to change it, you had to erase the entire thing and burn it again. Not really practical for partial updates as you would have on a CD encyclopedia. Though it would've been neat to see a hybrid CD with an inner ring of pressed, permanent data and an outer ring of CD-RW rewritable material such that the CD could have non-erasable base data and a rewritable "patch" area for future updates.
@@CalcProgrammer1 AFAIK only the NeXTcube had a rewritable Sony Minidisc(?) MOD drive as its only data media, and because discs were such expensive, software was often sold on rental discs those had to be returned after installation.
I worked at Disney World for a year in 1990. I was there when they unveiled the Body Wars ride at EPCOT. They asked park employees to come by on their time off and ride the ride as often as they liked for a full week before it was open to the public to make sure they had everything worked out. I worked at Space Mountain and usually had the morning opening shift so I got off fairly early in the day and would take the monorail over to EPCOT and ride their new ride and just hang out. I was in my early 20s.
It was the same with Imageworks. Between all the special effects, the neon Rainbow Corridor, touch sensitive pads, touchscreens and more, that was state of the art for 1983. By the time of that horrible remodel of the Imagination Pavilion in 1998-99, the upstairs Imageworks was closed off and an inferior version was created where it still is there today.
It kind of reminds me of an indoor game chain called Activate today. It's like being inside a video game! I remember some stuff like that at Disney (I think I went in 2010 or 2011?), but for Activate to have their whole thing be using your body to play various games using a variety of sensors, lights, and other tech. To kids, it seems so cool, but it's just a computer connected to sensors, buttons, and 3D printed parts. Still a lot of fun to play "the floor is lava" with an actual score on different coloured floor tiles, or pretend to be a spy and dodge lasers coming out of a wall. I wish more places were actually trying to use tech in different and fun ways.
I think you have just unlocked a memory. I always remembered playing with an interactive screen, and saying this was the future, but I never knew where from. I went to Florida Disney in 1997, when I was 14. I remember that animal kingdom was being built. I think these were the computers I used and was wowed by.
Okay the black man in 21:18 is 100% an actor. His name is Richard Penn and right around the same time he was on the Golden Girls specifically season 3 Episode 10: The Audit where he played an IRS agent. I’m not sure what happened here he was actually a pretty solid actor in the show I don’t know much about him but he has seems to have had a long career
when i went to Disney World for the first time as a kid, like in 94 to 96 somewhere in there, there was this kiosk contraption in the middle of Tomorrowland, two of them, each on opposite ends of the area. Kids were crowded around them. I was able to take a peak at what is was and remembered maybe a red public phone looking thing and a pixelated screen with people on it. Walking by the other, had the same. I THINK it was transmitting between the two, but have no idea what it was and never seen anything on it again. The next time I went to WDW a couple years later, there was no sign of them.
HP sold a PC in 1983 that used that same infrared optical touchscreen system around the monitor bezel. The touch detection was super low resolution, couldn't substitute for a mouse or a graphics tablet, but it was good enough to run a user interface where you could push virtual buttons. I think some other kiosk systems like ATMs sometimes used them, though it was more common to have buttons next to the CRT screen. The idea of integrating laserdisc imagery with a computer information retrieval system popped elsewhere in the 80s, too. Of course there were the arcade games like Dragon's Lair that used it to create a sort of choose-your-own-adventure movie, or provide an animated backdrop. And I remember Sears experimenting with a virtual catalog stored mostly on laserdisc that you could access through a kiosk in the store. (Since Sears had basically been the Amazon of the early 20th century, the whole idea of an electronic Sears catalog now seems like a fantastic missed opportunity for them. If they'd only hung on with that, instead of moving away from emphasizing catalog sales entirely, they might have avoided getting their lunch eaten.)
In around 1999, a company called Mendes was marketing bowling pinsetters and their scoring systems used that infrared touch screen at the control panel. One grubby fingerprint on the bezel and the whole thing quit working. We spent more time running around cleaning them. And people would hang their towels over the console and the towel would block the LEDs. Or multiple people would try to use it at once. What a nightmare. Can’t believe they worked at all in EPCOT with all those dirty fingers touching everything.
@@504RoadTrips And early fingerprint readers repeated signals of the residues of the last fingerprint by huffing on it. So just blow your moist breath onto a door lock was enough to make it unlock.
Our first visit to Epcot Center was in 1986 and I certainly remember using the WorldKey to make dining reservations. I also remember seeing a touch free water faucet in the restroom for the first time and thinking how utterly amazing that was.
Fun Fact: Bell Labs (owned by AT&T) invented the transistor but as part of the break-up, made a deal to not make commercial computer products. They invented modern computing and were banned from participating lol
10:46 I would say this isn’t quite true, almost immediately after the development of the transistor many people were rushing to use them for calculators and computers. The main problem was the original germanium transistors were quite expensive and not that reliable.
Wild that modern tech developers have forgotten how important being user friendly is. Every month I hear news of some cool concept or tech advancement failing simply because they forgot to make it easy to use for the general public.
That's the main reason why the 737 Max was grounded so long. They didn't prioritize usability and experience. The UI/UX class I took was one of my favourites of my whole degree because we talked about not only how to make things friendly, but also easy to use for those of a variety of ages, cultural backgrounds, and we focused a lot on disabilities too. I would love to be an accessibility consultant for a tech company someday, but my own disabilities have made it hard to even get an interview for any tech jobs.
But "user-friendliness" nowadays often means that every sophisticated features gets eliminated to turn once versatile software into completely dumbed-down "apps" only to reduce customer service feedback calls and make users obey instead of being enabled to do genuinely creative things with the product.
Learning about the history of transistors and how they played a role in this, along with the laserdiscs is so interesting to me. Thank you, man! I loved this. Excellent job. Disneyland had something remarkably similar to this in the 2000's. It wasn't connected to the internet (or at least would not access it) but you could communicate with other guests in that big "future" room. The computer stations let you create your own Fireworks show so I of course loaded it up with as much as I possibly could and I think it actually froze and restarted the machine. I remember seeing a windows logo and being SHOCKED! Good times. It looked a lot like 3:33 ! It was a very large warehouse-like room with 2 stories. Even in the 2000's it had a very retro feel but also felt like "Wow! This is gonna be what the future is like!" - I really loved it as a kid.I think it was around the time Windows Vista came out. I saw ASIMO for the first time there too! They had a whole demo, it was really impressive to me as a kid. First time I saw a real robot! He kicked a soccer ball! He walked up stairs! This sounds silly now but it was really impressive.
EPCOT was where i first experienced a lot of things in the 80's and early 90's. Computers, the "information superhighway," fiber optics, robotics, smart homes, video teleconferencing, and VR. It was a fascinating place that I still think about fondly, and for a long time, I wanted to work on the kind of stuff which I saw there as a kid. I remember when WDW was for tech and science enthusiasts, and not whatever you'd call what it is today. It's too bad that there's no equivalent place for kids of this generation.
Back in the mid 80's I used it to make reservations at the restaurants. I loved doing video chat with the cast members before we ever had cell phones and video chat. I can remember going on Horizons and seeing 50 inch flat screen tv's and tablet devices, and the characters doing video chat on those devices. At the time my friends and I thought that futuristic tech was really awesome and we could not wait to actually have it. Here we are 40 years later and we have all that stuff now !
They had it back then it was about the price of a car so the average consumer couldn't get it on credit............but look at us now 50 inch LCD is $299 and a 6 inch📱is $299 with dual sim slots, an octacore, 6 gig of ram and 1tb of SD storage.
Yay! Finally a video about this! By the time I got to Epcot for the first time they were gone. I've seen videos of vintage Epcot with this in the background and maybe a sentence, or two explaining what it is, but that's it. I've always wondered how in depth it all was and what the actual functions were.
I interned for WDW in 1996 & 1997. I remember getting a tour of the computer center at Epcot and seeing the WorldKey system. Even though it was looking pretty dated the functionality was pretty amazing at that time.
@15:32 - Imagine a world where any information in any book in any library in the world is available at the touch of a button... until the internet archive is taken down by copyright challenges using copyright laws that Disney strengthened.
Sperry and their competitor Burroughs are often talked about in computer history. They didn't disappear they merged together into Unisys, which is still around.
Welcome back! Completely forgot I was even subscribed…this was such a nice blast of nostalgia…really loved classic EPCOT (visited probably 8 times that first decade…)
I stumbled upon this video. I thought my memory was shot, as I clearly remember these kiosks when I visited EPCOT when it opened but I couldn't remember what they were called and nobody (even die-hard Disney fans) seemed to remember what the heck I was talking about. Glad to see I wasn't going insane and super-glad I stumbled upon this excellent video.
5:35 I remember when you could sign up for a tour of one of the several Sperry computer system areas, where a tour guide would explain what things were controlled by which computer, from the registers at a food pavilion, to the animatronics of an attraction. 16:41 Original? What about TRON?
I really like the rebrand and new uploads so far, keep up the great work! I look forward to future (hopefully soon) uploads! I will miss "keep epcot weird," though.
Your narration is awesome! I loved the way you dogged Exxon and the sly reference to the Universe of Energy being turned into the awful Ellen’s Energy Adventure! 🤪 I actually used the Workdkey system in 1990 when I was living in Orlando, and I’ll admit, it seemed like cool technology, except the live operator always seemed just a little too happy! 🤪
Heard about it? I remember using it to make reservations via video call with a cast member. But, that was the old, fun EPCOT with Communicore and World Showcase and not the new, "improved" retail space and Disney IP Showcase.
That Communicore video was narrated by Dick Tufeld, perhaps best known as the voice of the robot in Lost in Space, but also the opening narrator for Thundarr the barbarian and lots of other things. One of Hollywood's best voices of all times.
29:05 What's even crazier is that they weren't the first ones to invent Video Phones. If I remember correctly, back in 1936 Germany, they had Video Phones already. The Gegensehn-Fernsprechanlagen.
I wonder if "Mickey Mouse is no fool" was a got-some-wires-crossed reference to the old "I'm No Fool" shorts that were made for the Mickey Mouse Club (but actually featured Jiminy Cricket).
I remember the bubble burst when I was 12 or 13 in the late 80s, visiting EPCOT, and realizing thay many of the computers at the various pavilions had CGA graphics.
I remember these gizmos. I was in Junior High School in 1982 and was so excited about the prospect of what Epcot was supposed to be. I specifically remember trying ask questions at the kiosk and the awkwardness of speaking to someone with the blue curtain… despite that I was so bought in the future of what was to come nothing could squish my enthusiasm.
Bell Canada was involved with the Telidon system in the 80s as well. A partial implementation of Minitel in Canada and the US blew my mind when it was installed in my public library as a trial for a year or two. Of course my friends and I sniffed out several addresses for game servers. 😄
I would have _loved_ to have had the chance to try out a Canadian _Minitel_ terminal, if only to see if it was still possible to access the _36 15 [Nom]_ services despite being well outside of France! 😉 Sadly - Coming from the UK - The only service BT ever offered us for getting a _Nice time_ was accessed by dialling *1234* 🕑😋
Incredible work! I used to go to the parks often in the early 90s and I don't remember even seeing these things. What a nice treat to learn about them!
in 1982 i was just a toddler but what blows my mind is the fact there was touchscreen Tech back then and it worked on a CRT monitor y did it take another 25 years before that became a common staple in new device's .
Because to make a touch screen run on a CRT required a completely different technology than that used on flat screens: On those old CRT displays, the screen isn’t the thing reacting - it’s an infrared laser field over the screen and calculates where your finger is interrupting it, then sending that data as a click on the monitor. To put the lasers in that kind of monitor was bulky, faulty, and most of all… expensive.
I remember it well and so loved it. At the time, clicking a button on a TV screen and talking to somebody face-to-face who could make a reservation for you was super cool. FaceTime decades before FaceTime existed.
it’s crazy that somehow as someone born in 2001 who grew up with the internet my whole life (basically), i still feel like i can fully appreciate how mindblowing this all is once it’s actually explained to me. i can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to experience using these systems as an average person back in the day
I remember being surprised a live person answered for dinner reservations once when I was quite young in the late 80’s. Does anyone remember when they had video game systems in a big room? I think it was 1994. That room was my favorite place since I lived in Orlando and Disney was no big deal.
Please tell me we will get a communicore and innovations exhibits keep Epcot weird video. I know you went over a few in the robots of Epcot but I believe it deserves it own video
Does anyone remember the AT&T phone line simulator ride that they put in the network neighborhood interactive exhibits at Spaceship Earth EPCOT back around 1995?
Honestly, I love to learn about that early technology. Incredible how far we've come by now. And I love to read all of the comments sharing memories from back then. So thank you taking us along on memory lane!
Great video--very informative. It made me nostalgic, as I LOVE early EPCOT, as it seemed to be the most true to Walt's vision of the future before they stuffed it with Disney IP. The rule used to be "No characters in EPCOT Center", but that's long gone. Speaking of telecom and the Bell System, it did have ISDN (think of it as the grandfather of DSL) up it's sleeve. Although it hasn't really ever been popular as a method to connect to the "information superhighway", some businesses from the 1980s until around 2005 did use it for telephone service where you could compress a number of lines into a single copper circuit, as well as access advanced calling features through "Meridian Digital CENTREX" and "Plexar", which required special phones in some circumstances. Sorry for the long comment. Thanks again for the great video!
I worked as a computer technician for AT&T... and still have to deal with them in my current capacity even though I left them over 13 years ago. That whole "break them up" thing does NOT take away their pervasive power.
In Germany we had the Deutsche Bundespost monopolistic national phone and mail company, which in 1980th promised BIGFON as their fiber optic based pre-internet concept. Their actual web predecessor was Bildschirmtext (BTX) with text and C64-like still graphics, eating plenty of phone fees.
I never knew these hypertext-like systems were in Epcot when I was there in 1994. Fascinating stuff. Great to see the history of computing in this video.
Something huge to know about EPCOT was that it was supposed to be a self-sufficient town within the park where park employees could live. That was Walt's initial idea. He even thought so far ahead that he saw school children learning via what we'd call the internet today. The man literally saw Zoom classes before they even existed, he was that far ahead in his mind. The big problem was his own failing health and the fact tech wasn't yet where he needed it to be at in terms of the level he needed for it all to come together before his death.
As someone who owns way too many Sperry shoes and watches a ton of videos about maritime disasters, I always assumed the contractors from the Sperry Corporation who went down with the US nuclear sub Thresher were testing shoes on the mission. I mean, the white US Navy uniform comes with a pair of white Sperry sneakers and has for a very long time. Thank you for teaching me about weird ass EPCOT tech and that there is a different Sperry. It makes way more sense for high tech communications contractors to be on a nuclear sub than shoe company people.
Probably would have been late 90s/early 00’s - my family sent an email ‘card’ from one of those kiosk computers. Mind blowing at the time and we still have it !
I remember World Key well from when I was a kid visiting Epcot. Was an amazing system and part of and experience with computers that stretched beyond what we could see on the Commodore 64s back home.
It's kinda crazy to see that the tech showcased in things like Star Trek and World Key etc weren't necessarily things that weren't conceived yet past a fun concept, but things that technically did exist but the technology just wasn't there yet or it was so astronomically expensive that they shelved it only for it to return 30 years later. I still get mind boggled that we put people on the moon with the computer technology of a Ti-89 Calculator. I love reading through these comments of people who got to experience it first hand. It gives me a similar feeling talking to 20 year olds what it was like to see someone with a Sidekick or a Blackberry lol!
restaurant websites today still manage to screw up, obscuring the most salient data: the current menu, business hours, phone number, street address. checking off some C level marketing box without driving basic revenue
The more EPCOT content I consume the more I felt walt is actually pretty cool on pitching the whole epcot thing but Disney just slowly removing what once was the future into just movie slops
if you think about it as we sit here either at our own computers or on our phones, the vision did come true which would explain why disney had to remove the system from the attraction. the whole concept of a never ending worlds fair is to display things that people will use in the future. and when that future came and it was wide spread...well the attraction aspect is no longer showing anything futuristic and begins to look outdated. so in essence outside of the fact that the internet we use itself was a technology created by the US government for its military and other functions, ultimately all the ideas came together to give the wider public the very thing worldkey was trying to postulate. and see the comment about the actor and watching the shared clip...i cant unsee it now and i am now questioning any and all disney "documentaries" that have "imageneers" or other so called staff answering questions.
I'm not surprised by Bell being involved since Bell Labs was at the forefront at that time, and contributed a lot to computing that is still in use today. Like much of the Internet, the server hosting this video is running the Linux kernel, which is a clone of Unix that came out of Bell Labs. So did the C/C++ programming languages, which are still widely used.
Those people in the video were definitely actors. Because I’m positive the one man played an IRS agent in an episode of theGoldenGirls (also a Disney production).
OH MY GOD YOU'RE RIGHT! I just looked that up and saw the guy's name is "Richard Penn". Apparently he was also in Inspector Gadget (1999) and Doctor Dolittle (1998) on top of that Golden Girls appearance.
This guy was no "Worldkey designer" - he works for the dang IRS!!!
th-cam.com/video/-z2eTVtlYxo/w-d-xo.html (starts at 25 seconds)
@@ThemeParksShouldntExist 😅
I think the guy @:52 was some kind of boat capitan or cop or something else.
Nice catch!
lol how would you remember something like that?
It’s almost as if it was an INTRAnet….
The foundations of the current internet have been around since the 70s. Only when HTTP and SSL were developed in the 90s could the internet become useful for wider use.
The moment that saw the word “INTRAnet”…. I was immediately reminded of North Korea
@@TheEndOfTheFrontiers "intranet" is a standard term for private, internal company networks.
Exactly, so North Korea. Just with "Inc. or LLC at the end.
Actually, 60's 🤓
@@jetfrog4574 IP and TCP initial definitions date back to 1974 by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn but were ratified much later.
My dad was a computer scientist with Sperry, when we visited Epcot, we were treated to a VIP lounge with snacks and drinks, then a private tour of computer central. I was very little and can barely remember, but I did love the snacks and soda :)
having a Job, one can only dream 😥
I'm reminded of something Cathode Ray Dude said: they knew where the future was going, just not how to reach it. This system does a remarkably good job of simulating the functions of a device that wouldn't exist for another 30 years using much more primitive technology.
A lot of it is waiting for processing power to become small/energy efficient enough to fit the form factor.
@9HighFlyer9 Processing power and usable memory. A big part of why systems like Worldnet used prerecorded/prerendered videos was that computers of the time didn't have anywhere near enough RAM to store the assets needed for real-time rendering or the VRAM to store what was actually being sent to the screen, at least not at decent resolutions and color depths. That was a big part of why early computer graphics had very few pixels and colors.
Shout out to CRD!
I have no idea who that is but I adore their name... It's a name designed to cause the cathode ray tubes to resonate.
well yea, the computations being done by that giant room of computers can be done with a laptop now 😂
Opening-day World Key cast member here. Thanks for sharing this! - At 0:54 - That's "Jaribel" (Forgot her last name). At 0:56 is Kerry Cook. Such wonderful memories.
Kerry here! Amazing!!!
I remember Kerry well, also worked opening Worldkey great memories.
@@phyllismills595 Yes they were great memories... except that one party where the Civil Air Patrol had to leave in the middle for a "mission."
@@kerry2368 I love seeing this happen, people who not only were there, but who made an appearance in the video by sheer chance. Absolutely Awesome~
@@kerry2368 What was the best question *you* ever got? :D
Probably 100 marriage proposals a day from various obnoxious tourists. I struggle to imagine the public were better behaved than they are today.
It’s a dang hard time to present a video this in depth about a Disney park aspect I haven’t already seen. Excellent work.
I remember using Worldkey in the 80s in my early 20s. Set up dinner reservations at the Mexican pavilion via a 2-way video call. This brought up a lot of nostalgia and made me feel a bit old. I've, just by happenstance, had the fortune to be exposed to some really cutting edge technology at various times in my youth starting back in the early 70s. It was a wild time, everything was simpler.
Never feel sad to feel old. Just remember people of your era dropped dead from sad or dumb reasons. You survived so go you!!!
I remember Worldkey very well! It was a big part of my experience at Epcot when I was there on the third day that Epcott was open - October 3rd 1982. I spent a lot of time playing with it and using it to make a restaurant reservation. At the time it was incredible technology! I was very impressed with it.
Same. I was there as a child in 1983 or 4 and when I got lost in the park my first thought was to go to the World Key (which I had already played with for hours) booth between “Future-land” and “The World” and connect to a live cast member to help find my parents. It worked!
That people don't remember it probably says a lot to how good it was. If it was bad people would have panned it
EPCOT was one of the first large installs of fiber optic cable.
The taking off the glasses move in the "documentary" is great. The director clearly had one fun move to get the top tier performances from everybody. And I love things like "After a lot of discussion, we decided the system had to be fast." Like as if there was one rogue in every conference room for months insisting it had to be slow, and fastness was a major focus of debate. What if it's too fast? Wouldn't some users prefer an arbitrary delay, so it looks like the machine is thinking harder?
You'd be surprised how much that technique is used today to make things feel more secure. I'm pretty sure I used it in a project demo for university where me had the program wait for a short time to seem like it was doing more.
Actually yes people prefer arbitrary delays im not even joking.
> "After a lot of discussion, we decided the system had to be fast."
Speaking as a professional software developer, I don't agree that this was a vacuous decision. In engineering projects, you have three things you can prioritize: speed, quality and efficiency. You get to pick two and only two from that list. You never get all three at once. It's part of the fundamental nature of engineering that something always has to be sacrificed. Anyone who disagrees with this isn't a real engineer: they're some kind of manager or con man. So if Disney's engineers tell me they decided to prioritize speed, my next question will be what they chose to sacrifice to achieve speed. Saying they chose speed means they accepted a compromise either to quality or to efficiency. My guess is that they sacrificed efficiency on this project considering that they were willing to throw such expensive hardware at the problem, making a massively inefficient system that nevertheless delivered fast, high quality results despite costing a fortune in cutting edge equipment. The whole vibe of Epcott is that it's OK for this experimental technology to be extremely inefficient as long as it's fast and reasonably good.
You be surprised how many times I have had to add arbitrary delays for things like precisely, make it look like the machine is thinking harder.
The BBC had a very similar system in place when they were promoting their "Domesday Project" to archive living life of someone in the 1980s. They displayed it in a lot of theme parks, events, and even schools using a BBC Micro hooked up to a LaserDisc player.
But yeah, it's essentially the same tech that was in arcades with games like Dragon's Lair.
As soon as I came to the part that showed WorldKey to be LaserDisc based, _The Domesday Project_ was the first thing that came to mind. Arguably both seem to be the same general idea, except Domesday setups were all standalone with the controlling computer (A BBC Master) in immediate proximity, rather than being remote and connected over a network. 👍
Thinking about the menu system on that (Where one „walked“ around a virtual „gallery“) I wonder if Disney/ATT had considered that a possibility for WorldKey too, though perhaps it wouldn't have been appropriate for a resort information kiosk. ⏳
Hey Larry!!!
@@dieseldragon6756 The Domesday Project discs were more than just simple LaserDiscs, though. They used a Philips-developed technology called LV-ROM which could not only store analog video but also up to 2GB of data per disc which was recorded along with the analog video. There are still two complete and working Domesday workstations, one at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge and another at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.
You're following me Larry! xDD I forgot the other channel you follow that I do but, you do have great taste :) It might have been some industrial investigation channel or something. Of course I'm subbed to you too.
@@dieseldragon6756 I was obsessed with that virtual gallery disc, especially the painting you could climb into that lead to a block of flats, and you could walk around that guy's flat.
Been hoping for years someone can emulate it online.
3:02 Futurism started dying with Horizons. It is gut wrenching actually. Hearing about Walts last days and how he spend his final hours dedicated to futurism, it really hurts to see it in the state it’s in now. Just telling the story, you feel something.
So please, keep telling us stories so we can keep futurism alive. What we have now, is becoming lost.
That was the one thing that really interested me when I went to Epcot as a kid (I think I was around 12). The hope for the future and emphasis on innovation was part of what made me interested in technology. But now, even with a degree in computers, there really isn't a lot of innovation. I'm currently using an 8 year old laptop and at any other time in history, using tech that old felt mostly incompatible with what was available, yet I can use everything I need to. Perhaps a bit slower than something new, but the differences are minimal. This also happens to be the model of MacBook with the funky touch screen instead of function keys, but that never took off (and I see why).
There's not much real innovation, just gimmicks that never seem to be as thought out or useful as they may sound. Innovation and hope are what made Disney feel magical to me, compared to any other amusement park. I don't think I'd go back now because so much of it seems like generic stuff with Disney characters on it.
@ There is innovation out there in the IT/IS world, but it has slowed down and its way more taxing to get at now.
After Thunderbolt 3/4 I dont see any progress with Chipsets because Microsoft just takes away your resources like an older brother who is being a jerk. Mission Critical MUST BE DONE NOW!!!!!!! Updates, Datamining, “Anti-Malware Executable”, Network Mining, Ad-gated Servers, file name mining, and a bunch more things that have a higher process priority than anything you are “allowed” to do with your computer you paid for. You need to have a python script or powershell script just to wrangle your pc so it dont just take away resources you are currently using, even with DNS based IP blocks.
It’s the most demotivating thing I have ever seen on a PC. I have been on a computer since before I could construct a sentence and its a horrible time to be a fan of technology. None of the GUIs are intuitive or even fully functional half the time, and when they are, the software engineers move things around to “hide the bugs under the map” rather than fix them.
Back to Thunderbolt, the promise of an External GPU was/is pretty exciting and a game changer for having a real mobile warrior box. Even with 10 year old hardware, a TB eGPU will outpace an off the shelf cutting edge mobile workstation with a Quadro for no other reason than electrical power consumption.
2013 was a fantastic time for computers, so dont undersell that. I get the same feels for that time as walking into Innoventions at Epcot at 11. Just a wave of synergy being injected right into the frontal lobe by excitement. So much excitement, Randy Savage cant even say excitement with adding another syllable to the word.
The closest thing in recent memory is working with something like the Atmel Atmega32u4 and making custom HID(s) and biofeedback/biorhythm devices. For for example a controller than watches your heart rate and blood o2 and keeps you motivated while your at your desk restarting servers at 2:30. (Am or PM, just a sketchy time) Or warns you if you’re getting too worked up and gives you haptic feedback so the customer doesnt notice. None of it profitable money wise, but worth your moonlight hours.
Hopefully we are about to turn a corner with computers where we can get excited again, rather than having to struggle to just get through starting up our box for the day and all the surprises and frustrations that seems to come with….
As I understand, Walt wanted Tomorrowland to be more like a futuristic, but totalitarian city folk could live at, rather than just another part of the park.
Nowadays futurism would mean to build completely self-supplying skyscrapers those not only generate their own energy from sun and wind but also recycle their waste by 3D printers into goods and produce their own food through vertical farms for a completely redneck-free sustainable life. This would be the spirit of a genuine planetary spage-age civilization.
@@Shunn3d Auroville in India eventually became a bit of what Epcot was originally supposed to be (although way less hitech based).
Nice seeing my old colleague Floyd Kalber in that AT&T archive clip 32 minutes in.
I'm so glad someone finally made a video going into worldkey, it's a aspect of Epcot that became so obscure, that no one has really covered it until now, and if they did, it was a small video
I've always felt a fundamental flaw of EPCOT, or any theme parks with future world type attractions, is that it takes a decade between beginning planning and having the exhibits operational. So right there you are already somewhat behind the times. Add to it that theme parks are very resistant to updating an changing existing rides and showcases. So many of these things end up hanging around 20-30 years. Either we've already surpassed the future timeline or the world has changes so much that the futuristic thing you are showing will come to pass in a very different way. I always feel that way about the end of Spaceship Earth.
It seems like the end is what changes in that ride more than anything else. I feel like the end of that ride is the late 1970s between that scientist with the fro and a guy working on a "personal computer" (supposedly that is Steve Woz and the first Apple Computer) along with the '70s car that's in there. Anything beyond that is just guessing the future. Since that ride is 42 years old now, that sounds about right. There really isn't room for much else unless something is taken out (like that starfield).
In Disney parks fandom they call this "The Tomorrowland Problem." Any kind of effort to imagine a realistic near future becomes obsolete quickly, and it's almost worse when the predictions come true than when they don't, because now you've got an exhibit of something that is completely mundane. Disney thought they'd cracked it with Epcot because these exhibits were all being made with funding from corporate partners who would be willing to foot the bill on frequent refreshes as history marched on. But it didn't work out that way--most of the corporate partners bailed early on, and even when they hung on or were replaced by someone else, they didn't necessarily have deep enough pockets to keep reworking the attraction. The one that really did hang on and keep adequately funding things was General Motors, oddly enough, which is why World of Motion became Test Track and that's now on its second major refresh.
Yhea but you can also back on retro-futurism. People may not be interested in seeing "the future" but there are definitely a lot off people that will be interested in seeing the past´s vision of ""the future" which i think its why some old atracctions like spaceship earth are mantained, they are just that iconic despite being outdated.
@@ciclon5682 Nowadays futurism would mean to build completely self-supplying skyscrapers those not only generate their own energy from sun and wind but also recycle their waste by 3D printers into goods and produce their own food through vertical farms for a completely redneck-free sustainable life. This would be the spirit of a genuine planetary spage-age civilization. And regarding future achievements that unlikely can be reached in our lives, think of time machines, teleporters and warp drive spaceships.
On my third or fourth watch, thank you for capturing this era of Epcot and the world key as I’ve never been and still feel nostalgia for it
Is there a word for that distinct late 70s/early 80s aesthetic with the brown tones, heavy synth and old tech? Like there's vaporwave for late 80s/early 90s, but that particular era is like a drug to me. This video is like putting it right into my veins. I need more.
"cassette futurism", I think? Some overlap with later 80s, though.
I also love it, I love the colour and how futuristic yet clunky it all is. The new alien movie did it well
@@krmu7068 That was my house growing up! Wood paneling and a state of the art stereo complete with a wood paneled tape deck.
Awesome
Superdesign iirc
Most of us who tinkered with this couldn't fathom that when we were using those touch screens, we were literally touching the future. Excellent video!
It's basically the precursor to what we have now so in that sense this video doesn't really do it justice. Capacitive, resistive, etc. still work by getting X and Y coordinates and plotting them to a definition for the current display. The fact that they used something that wasn't built into the glass itself shouldn't detract from its significance.
Using a touch screen is still cool to this day. Also cool when you start up an app and a feature just changes a bit because of last nights update. Love the future.
Touch screens have existed for ages. They were simply inferior to a mouse until it became practical to use them for mobile devices.
@@80s_Gamrthe iPhone wasn't revolutionary because it was a touch screen. It was revolutionary because it was a touch screen in a phone size case. The touch screen part isn't the crazy part.
@Sammysapphira Who said anything about iPhone and them being "revolutionary"? I was just talking about tech in general, for which I've lived through all of these generations as a technician. Personally I'm no fan of iPhones... but that's a different story, lol.
Went through my subscriptions list yesterday for the first time in ages, and said "Wow, 8 months already? Hopefully there's something new in the works."
Didn't know I had these powers, but I'm not complaining. Awesome to have you back.
Thank you for manifesting a new TPSE video.
The computer division of Sperry may be gone, but the company is alive and well providing nondestructive testing services for railroads. Elmer Sperry invented many, many things.
This channel is so slept on it's almost criminal- Have a comment and a like for the algorithm, mate.
i actually bought a bunch of the laserdisc players from this from property control in the spring of 2000. About 200 of them were sitting there, $20 a piece
Essentially, it was a giant, and primitive, version of one of those "Encyclopedia" CD's for computers, that were all the rage back in the 90's. I think that every parent bought one for their computer for their kids to use to do their homework with.
And there was even a way to update those CD encyclopedias: one could download smaller database patches from a BBS or the internet. You could occasionally find these patches on various CDs bundled with computing magazines.
@@negirno That was one major advantage (or the music industry may say disadvantage) to CDs is that they came in rewriteable versions. Although I was surprised going back and playing some old PC games to see how some of them sort of used a hybrid approach of accessing some files on the PC, and some stuff on the CD, much like how I've edited photos directly from the SD card today.
IIRC most of those PCs came with at least one in the late '90s
@@jlbeeen I don't recall rewritable CDs ever being used for a commercial product like this, they were basically just for end user use. Even then, they were basically just read-only CDs that could be completely erased and reused than truly read/write media. You burned what you wanted onto the disc and if you wanted to change it, you had to erase the entire thing and burn it again. Not really practical for partial updates as you would have on a CD encyclopedia. Though it would've been neat to see a hybrid CD with an inner ring of pressed, permanent data and an outer ring of CD-RW rewritable material such that the CD could have non-erasable base data and a rewritable "patch" area for future updates.
@@CalcProgrammer1 AFAIK only the NeXTcube had a rewritable Sony Minidisc(?) MOD drive as its only data media, and because discs were such expensive, software was often sold on rental discs those had to be returned after installation.
I worked at Disney World for a year in 1990. I was there when they unveiled the Body Wars ride at EPCOT. They asked park employees to come by on their time off and ride the ride as often as they liked for a full week before it was open to the public to make sure they had everything worked out. I worked at Space Mountain and usually had the morning opening shift so I got off fairly early in the day and would take the monorail over to EPCOT and ride their new ride and just hang out.
I was in my early 20s.
I know it seems silly now. But in 1984? This was cutting edge fantastic to a kid.
It was the same with Imageworks. Between all the special effects, the neon Rainbow Corridor, touch sensitive pads, touchscreens and more, that was state of the art for 1983. By the time of that horrible remodel of the Imagination Pavilion in 1998-99, the upstairs Imageworks was closed off and an inferior version was created where it still is there today.
It kind of reminds me of an indoor game chain called Activate today. It's like being inside a video game! I remember some stuff like that at Disney (I think I went in 2010 or 2011?), but for Activate to have their whole thing be using your body to play various games using a variety of sensors, lights, and other tech. To kids, it seems so cool, but it's just a computer connected to sensors, buttons, and 3D printed parts. Still a lot of fun to play "the floor is lava" with an actual score on different coloured floor tiles, or pretend to be a spy and dodge lasers coming out of a wall. I wish more places were actually trying to use tech in different and fun ways.
I think you have just unlocked a memory. I always remembered playing with an interactive screen, and saying this was the future, but I never knew where from. I went to Florida Disney in 1997, when I was 14. I remember that animal kingdom was being built.
I think these were the computers I used and was wowed by.
Okay the black man in 21:18 is 100% an actor. His name is Richard Penn and right around the same time he was on the Golden Girls specifically season 3 Episode 10: The Audit where he played an IRS agent.
I’m not sure what happened here he was actually a pretty solid actor in the show I don’t know much about him but he has seems to have had a long career
when i went to Disney World for the first time as a kid, like in 94 to 96 somewhere in there, there was this kiosk contraption in the middle of Tomorrowland, two of them, each on opposite ends of the area. Kids were crowded around them. I was able to take a peak at what is was and remembered maybe a red public phone looking thing and a pixelated screen with people on it. Walking by the other, had the same. I THINK it was transmitting between the two, but have no idea what it was and never seen anything on it again. The next time I went to WDW a couple years later, there was no sign of them.
HP sold a PC in 1983 that used that same infrared optical touchscreen system around the monitor bezel. The touch detection was super low resolution, couldn't substitute for a mouse or a graphics tablet, but it was good enough to run a user interface where you could push virtual buttons. I think some other kiosk systems like ATMs sometimes used them, though it was more common to have buttons next to the CRT screen.
The idea of integrating laserdisc imagery with a computer information retrieval system popped elsewhere in the 80s, too. Of course there were the arcade games like Dragon's Lair that used it to create a sort of choose-your-own-adventure movie, or provide an animated backdrop. And I remember Sears experimenting with a virtual catalog stored mostly on laserdisc that you could access through a kiosk in the store. (Since Sears had basically been the Amazon of the early 20th century, the whole idea of an electronic Sears catalog now seems like a fantastic missed opportunity for them. If they'd only hung on with that, instead of moving away from emphasizing catalog sales entirely, they might have avoided getting their lunch eaten.)
In around 1999, a company called Mendes was marketing bowling pinsetters and their scoring systems used that infrared touch screen at the control panel. One grubby fingerprint on the bezel and the whole thing quit working. We spent more time running around cleaning them. And people would hang their towels over the console and the towel would block the LEDs. Or multiple people would try to use it at once. What a nightmare. Can’t believe they worked at all in EPCOT with all those dirty fingers touching everything.
@@504RoadTrips And early fingerprint readers repeated signals of the residues of the last fingerprint by huffing on it. So just blow your moist breath onto a door lock was enough to make it unlock.
I thought I was the only one who remembered HP touchscreens from the 80s.
Our first visit to Epcot Center was in 1986 and I certainly remember using the WorldKey to make dining reservations. I also remember seeing a touch free water faucet in the restroom for the first time and thinking how utterly amazing that was.
Fun Fact: Bell Labs (owned by AT&T) invented the transistor but as part of the break-up, made a deal to not make commercial computer products. They invented modern computing and were banned from participating lol
10:46 I would say this isn’t quite true, almost immediately after the development of the transistor many people were rushing to use them for calculators and computers. The main problem was the original germanium transistors were quite expensive and not that reliable.
Wild that modern tech developers have forgotten how important being user friendly is. Every month I hear news of some cool concept or tech advancement failing simply because they forgot to make it easy to use for the general public.
That's the main reason why the 737 Max was grounded so long. They didn't prioritize usability and experience. The UI/UX class I took was one of my favourites of my whole degree because we talked about not only how to make things friendly, but also easy to use for those of a variety of ages, cultural backgrounds, and we focused a lot on disabilities too. I would love to be an accessibility consultant for a tech company someday, but my own disabilities have made it hard to even get an interview for any tech jobs.
But "user-friendliness" nowadays often means that every sophisticated features gets eliminated to turn once versatile software into completely dumbed-down "apps" only to reduce customer service feedback calls and make users obey instead of being enabled to do genuinely creative things with the product.
Hell no, everything is too user friendly these days, to the point of being barely functional brainwashing machines.
@@jlbeeen I do accessibility, it can be rewarding but it's mostly just infuriating.
Learning about the history of transistors and how they played a role in this, along with the laserdiscs is so interesting to me. Thank you, man! I loved this. Excellent job.
Disneyland had something remarkably similar to this in the 2000's. It wasn't connected to the internet (or at least would not access it) but you could communicate with other guests in that big "future" room. The computer stations let you create your own Fireworks show so I of course loaded it up with as much as I possibly could and I think it actually froze and restarted the machine. I remember seeing a windows logo and being SHOCKED! Good times. It looked a lot like 3:33 ! It was a very large warehouse-like room with 2 stories. Even in the 2000's it had a very retro feel but also felt like "Wow! This is gonna be what the future is like!" - I really loved it as a kid.I think it was around the time Windows Vista came out. I saw ASIMO for the first time there too! They had a whole demo, it was really impressive to me as a kid. First time I saw a real robot! He kicked a soccer ball! He walked up stairs! This sounds silly now but it was really impressive.
EPCOT was where i first experienced a lot of things in the 80's and early 90's. Computers, the "information superhighway," fiber optics, robotics, smart homes, video teleconferencing, and VR. It was a fascinating place that I still think about fondly, and for a long time, I wanted to work on the kind of stuff which I saw there as a kid. I remember when WDW was for tech and science enthusiasts, and not whatever you'd call what it is today. It's too bad that there's no equivalent place for kids of this generation.
Back in the mid 80's I used it to make reservations at the restaurants. I loved doing video chat with the cast members before we ever had cell phones and video chat.
I can remember going on Horizons and seeing 50 inch flat screen tv's and tablet devices, and the characters doing video chat on those devices. At the time my friends and I thought
that futuristic tech was really awesome and we could not wait to actually have it. Here we are 40 years later and we have all that stuff now !
They had it back then it was about the price of a car so the average consumer couldn't get it on credit............but look at us now 50 inch LCD is $299 and a 6 inch📱is $299 with dual sim slots, an octacore, 6 gig of ram and 1tb of SD storage.
Yay! Finally a video about this! By the time I got to Epcot for the first time they were gone. I've seen videos of vintage Epcot with this in the background and maybe a sentence, or two explaining what it is, but that's it. I've always wondered how in depth it all was and what the actual functions were.
I interned for WDW in 1996 & 1997. I remember getting a tour of the computer center at Epcot and seeing the WorldKey system. Even though it was looking pretty dated the functionality was pretty amazing at that time.
@15:32 - Imagine a world where any information in any book in any library in the world is available at the touch of a button... until the internet archive is taken down by copyright challenges using copyright laws that Disney strengthened.
i'm a disney parks guy and i had no idea about this thing. thank you.
Sperry and their competitor Burroughs are often talked about in computer history. They didn't disappear they merged together into Unisys, which is still around.
And everyone was disappointed the merged company was neither called "Sparrows" or "Berry." And yeah, Unisys is still a multi-billion dollar company.
did not know this was a thing and i love learning about this kind of stuff holy moly thank you
Welcome back! Completely forgot I was even subscribed…this was such a nice blast of nostalgia…really loved classic EPCOT (visited probably 8 times that first decade…)
I remember this. In the 80’s when I was a little kid we would visit Epcot and my parents would use this to make dinner reservations.
So glad you’re back! I’ve been rewatching some of my favorite videos of yours as I’m feeling ill. :’) They’re quite comforting.
I stumbled upon this video. I thought my memory was shot, as I clearly remember these kiosks when I visited EPCOT when it opened but I couldn't remember what they were called and nobody (even die-hard Disney fans) seemed to remember what the heck I was talking about. Glad to see I wasn't going insane and super-glad I stumbled upon this excellent video.
5:35 I remember when you could sign up for a tour of one of the several Sperry computer system areas, where a tour guide would explain what things were controlled by which computer, from the registers at a food pavilion, to the animatronics of an attraction. 16:41 Original? What about TRON?
I did that tour a few times and was always in awe of the giant banks of computers with real people in the room working on them.
I really like the rebrand and new uploads so far, keep up the great work! I look forward to future (hopefully soon) uploads! I will miss "keep epcot weird," though.
Was not expecting to be reminded of Teletext. It seemed very advanced at the time!
Your narration is awesome! I loved the way you dogged Exxon and the sly reference to the Universe of Energy being turned into the awful Ellen’s Energy Adventure! 🤪 I actually used the Workdkey system in 1990 when I was living in Orlando, and I’ll admit, it seemed like cool technology, except the live operator always seemed just a little too happy! 🤪
Was super excited to see you posted a video! I love your Epcot stuff!
Fantastic video!!! I remember this from EPCOT when I was a kid. Glad to see all the footage of it, too!
Heard about it? I remember using it to make reservations via video call with a cast member. But, that was the old, fun EPCOT with Communicore and World Showcase and not the new, "improved" retail space and Disney IP Showcase.
That Communicore video was narrated by Dick Tufeld, perhaps best known as the voice of the robot in Lost in Space, but also the opening narrator for Thundarr the barbarian and lots of other things. One of Hollywood's best voices of all times.
24:06 OMG... 1968-1970 VIATRON Keystation "Terminals" in action...where did you find such an amazing gem of video footage? Awesome!!!
29:05
What's even crazier is that they weren't the first ones to invent Video Phones. If I remember correctly, back in 1936 Germany, they had Video Phones already. The Gegensehn-Fernsprechanlagen.
I wonder if "Mickey Mouse is no fool" was a got-some-wires-crossed reference to the old "I'm No Fool" shorts that were made for the Mickey Mouse Club (but actually featured Jiminy Cricket).
I remember the bubble burst when I was 12 or 13 in the late 80s, visiting EPCOT, and realizing thay many of the computers at the various pavilions had CGA graphics.
I remember these gizmos. I was in Junior High School in 1982 and was so excited about the prospect of what Epcot was supposed to be. I specifically remember trying ask questions at the kiosk and the awkwardness of speaking to someone with the blue curtain… despite that I was so bought in the future of what was to come nothing could squish my enthusiasm.
TRON also had a character named Bit the same year. I wonder if they were supposed to be the same character.
They may have just been born from the same idea of a computer bit. The one in Tron was a lot closer to what a bit actually was (yes/no)
I was thinking the same thing...lol
FYI, the Bell system Videophone was demoed at the NY World's Fair in 1964-65...
Bell Canada was involved with the Telidon system in the 80s as well. A partial implementation of Minitel in Canada and the US blew my mind when it was installed in my public library as a trial for a year or two. Of course my friends and I sniffed out several addresses for game servers. 😄
I would have _loved_ to have had the chance to try out a Canadian _Minitel_ terminal, if only to see if it was still possible to access the _36 15 [Nom]_ services despite being well outside of France! 😉
Sadly - Coming from the UK - The only service BT ever offered us for getting a _Nice time_ was accessed by dialling *1234* 🕑😋
Incredible work! I used to go to the parks often in the early 90s and I don't remember even seeing these things. What a nice treat to learn about them!
Thank you for explaining this to people who don’t understand any of this crap, it really makes me happy that people want to know what I know :)
Bit was there so one day Clippy could FLY
in 1982 i was just a toddler but what blows my mind is the fact there was touchscreen Tech back then and it worked on a CRT monitor y did it take another 25 years before that became a common staple in new device's .
Because to make a touch screen run on a CRT required a completely different technology than that used on flat screens:
On those old CRT displays, the screen isn’t the thing reacting - it’s an infrared laser field over the screen and calculates where your finger is interrupting it, then sending that data as a click on the monitor. To put the lasers in that kind of monitor was bulky, faulty, and most of all… expensive.
I remember it well and so loved it. At the time, clicking a button on a TV screen and talking to somebody face-to-face who could make a reservation for you was super cool. FaceTime decades before FaceTime existed.
it’s crazy that somehow as someone born in 2001 who grew up with the internet my whole life (basically), i still feel like i can fully appreciate how mindblowing this all is once it’s actually explained to me. i can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to experience using these systems as an average person back in the day
Same, and I was born in 2008! I am fascinated by older communication/information systems, especially pre-internet or analog ones!
It was mostly the same as today, just slower. Porn distribution and yelling at strangers.
It was still around my first couple of visits, starting in 1994. I loved making restaurant reservations with it.
I remember being surprised a live person answered for dinner reservations once when I was quite young in the late 80’s. Does anyone remember when they had video game systems in a big room? I think it was 1994. That room was my favorite place since I lived in Orlando and Disney was no big deal.
This may be one of the more fascinating videos I’ve seen in a long time! Thank you for doing the time!
Please tell me we will get a communicore and innovations exhibits keep Epcot weird video. I know you went over a few in the robots of Epcot but I believe it deserves it own video
Thanks for explaining this to beginners!
Does anyone remember the AT&T phone line simulator ride that they put in the network neighborhood interactive exhibits at Spaceship Earth EPCOT back around 1995?
Amazing that a laserdisc-based system lasted until 1999
Love your videos! So much research, depth and detail goes into them!!
"Bit" -- doesn't even turn into a yellow octahedron when he says yes, or a red second stellation of an icosahedron when he says no.
Man. Future World was beautiful. I miss the old tomorrow.
Honestly, I love to learn about that early technology. Incredible how far we've come by now. And I love to read all of the comments sharing memories from back then. So thank you taking us along on memory lane!
Great video--very informative. It made me nostalgic, as I LOVE early EPCOT, as it seemed to be the most true to Walt's vision of the future before they stuffed it with Disney IP. The rule used to be "No characters in EPCOT Center", but that's long gone.
Speaking of telecom and the Bell System, it did have ISDN (think of it as the grandfather of DSL) up it's sleeve. Although it hasn't really ever been popular as a method to connect to the "information superhighway", some businesses from the 1980s until around 2005 did use it for telephone service where you could compress a number of lines into a single copper circuit, as well as access advanced calling features through "Meridian Digital CENTREX" and "Plexar", which required special phones in some circumstances.
Sorry for the long comment. Thanks again for the great video!
I worked as a computer technician for AT&T... and still have to deal with them in my current capacity even though I left them over 13 years ago. That whole "break them up" thing does NOT take away their pervasive power.
In Germany we had the Deutsche Bundespost monopolistic national phone and mail company, which in 1980th promised BIGFON as their fiber optic based pre-internet concept. Their actual web predecessor was Bildschirmtext (BTX) with text and C64-like still graphics, eating plenty of phone fees.
I never knew these hypertext-like systems were in Epcot when I was there in 1994. Fascinating stuff. Great to see the history of computing in this video.
25:30 wait this is my computer wallpaper…no clue it had actual Disney history behind it, I just thought it was a painting of Epcot!!!
Best theme park channel on the website! Keep it up!
Something huge to know about EPCOT was that it was supposed to be a self-sufficient town within the park where park employees could live. That was Walt's initial idea. He even thought so far ahead that he saw school children learning via what we'd call the internet today. The man literally saw Zoom classes before they even existed, he was that far ahead in his mind. The big problem was his own failing health and the fact tech wasn't yet where he needed it to be at in terms of the level he needed for it all to come together before his death.
Auroville in India eventually became a bit of what Epcot was originally supposed to be (although way less hitech based).
Phenomenal video Jack. It's like an extended bonus Keep Epcot Weird:)
As someone who owns way too many Sperry shoes and watches a ton of videos about maritime disasters, I always assumed the contractors from the Sperry Corporation who went down with the US nuclear sub Thresher were testing shoes on the mission. I mean, the white US Navy uniform comes with a pair of white Sperry sneakers and has for a very long time. Thank you for teaching me about weird ass EPCOT tech and that there is a different Sperry. It makes way more sense for high tech communications contractors to be on a nuclear sub than shoe company people.
Probably would have been late 90s/early 00’s - my family sent an email ‘card’ from one of those kiosk computers. Mind blowing at the time and we still have it !
I remember World Key well from when I was a kid visiting Epcot. Was an amazing system and part of and experience with computers that stretched beyond what we could see on the Commodore 64s back home.
It's kinda crazy to see that the tech showcased in things like Star Trek and World Key etc weren't necessarily things that weren't conceived yet past a fun concept, but things that technically did exist but the technology just wasn't there yet or it was so astronomically expensive that they shelved it only for it to return 30 years later. I still get mind boggled that we put people on the moon with the computer technology of a Ti-89 Calculator. I love reading through these comments of people who got to experience it first hand. It gives me a similar feeling talking to 20 year olds what it was like to see someone with a Sidekick or a Blackberry lol!
Happy to see you back!!!!!!
restaurant websites today still manage to screw up, obscuring the most salient data: the current menu, business hours, phone number, street address. checking off some C level marketing box without driving basic revenue
Making dining reservations this way is one of my favorite park memories. It was so futuristic!
The more EPCOT content I consume the more I felt walt is actually pretty cool on pitching the whole epcot thing but Disney just slowly removing what once was the future into just movie slops
if you think about it as we sit here either at our own computers or on our phones, the vision did come true which would explain why disney had to remove the system from the attraction. the whole concept of a never ending worlds fair is to display things that people will use in the future. and when that future came and it was wide spread...well the attraction aspect is no longer showing anything futuristic and begins to look outdated.
so in essence outside of the fact that the internet we use itself was a technology created by the US government for its military and other functions, ultimately all the ideas came together to give the wider public the very thing worldkey was trying to postulate.
and see the comment about the actor and watching the shared clip...i cant unsee it now and i am now questioning any and all disney "documentaries" that have "imageneers" or other so called staff answering questions.
I'm not surprised by Bell being involved since Bell Labs was at the forefront at that time, and contributed a lot to computing that is still in use today. Like much of the Internet, the server hosting this video is running the Linux kernel, which is a clone of Unix that came out of Bell Labs. So did the C/C++ programming languages, which are still widely used.
"COMMUNICOR! Your Close Encounter with the Future!" Shows you how they equated technology with alien invasion.
Glad to see you back at it!
I remember using it for dining reservations.
Totally useless comment: Minute 14:26 grown man wearing a spaghetti strap tank. The 80s were wild