The Abraham Lincoln Audio-Animatronic is an important part of Disney history .
PHOTO BY CLIFF WANG
A PRESIDENTIAL TRADITION One of Blaine ’ s early projects as an Imagineer was the 1964 World ’ s Fair , which gave him the opportunity to develop the Abraham Lincoln Audio- Animatronic for Great Moments with Mr . Lincoln . Wes , who was a teenager at the time , got to witness this project up close .
“ Lincoln , as you know , was one of Walt ’ s great heroes ,” Wes explained to me . “ He was also a hero of my dad ’ s .
“ The sculpture was a pleasure for dad ,” he recalled . “ Nothing in Dad ’ s entire career was more terrifying than first of all figuring out how to get all the machinery inside this head … and then ultimately when they put the entire figure together to get the figure to move and to speak when nothing like this had ever been done in history . It was absolutely groundbreaking .”
While Great Moments with Mr . Lincoln