disneyland Archives - Davison

Five Things you Might Not Have Known About Walt Disney

Kristi Russell — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 15:21:34 +0000

Saturday, December 5th would have been Walt Disney’s 114^th birthday!

Walt Disney is known as one of the most creative animators and entrepreneurs of all time. Did we also mention that he just so happens to be one of our founder and CEO George Davison’s inspirational heroes, too?

Born on December 5, 1901 near Chicago, Illinois, Walt Disney always had an innate desire to create.

Though we know Walt Disney, of course, for his popular creations of Disneyland and Disney World, we wanted to share with you five fun facts that you might not have known about Walt Disney himself!

At the age of 16, Disney dropped out of high school in the hopes of joining the Army, but was rejected for being too young. Instead, he was able to become an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in France.
Disney’s first animation studio was named Laugh-O-Gram. It was here that he began to tell modernized fairytales that were based on Aesop’s Fables. However, the studio went bankrupt (Luckily, that roadblock didn’t deter Disney!).
Disney was known for his skills as an animator; but, he also gave voice acting a chance as well. Mickey Mouse was created in 1928 and from there until 1947, the voice of the mouse was provided by none other than Disney himself, before it was turned over to an English voice actor. However, Disney loved the Mickey Mouse character so much that he returned to the studio in 1955 to voice Mickey Mouse shorts for his company’s television show, The Mickey Mouse Club.
After Disneyland opened, Walt Disney wanted to build a ski resort in California’s Sequoia National Park that mimicked a Swiss-style base village. Though Disney received approval from all governmental agencies, unfortunately when Disney passed away in 1966, the company felt that it could only handle one project at a time, thus deciding to spend their time completing Disney World.
Walt Disney won 22 Academy Awards and was nominated 59 times between 1932 and 1969. Three of these awards were created specifically for him, one of which was for his creation of Mickey Mouse, while another recognized his contribution of music in the animation field and finally, an Oscar was given to honor Snow White and the Seven Dwarves that featured a traditional Oscar statuette and seven mini versions along with it.

Without a doubt, Walt Disney’s creativity and innovative legacy live on through the many parks, films and other memorabilia that now bear his name.

So, to commemorate Walt Disney’s birthday, we hope that you enjoyed these five fun facts that you might not have known about the man whose creativity continues to inspire creative minds all over the world!

If you have the same undeniable determination to bring your creative ideas to life, submit your idea today.

Copyright Davison, 2015

Sources:

http://www.biography.com/people/walt-disney-9275533#video-gallery

http://www.inc.com/larry-kim/31-surprising-facts-about-walt-disney.html

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/10/16/10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-walt-disney/

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4004/4697933152_f4430ec5b7_b.jpg

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Innovation You Can Feel at Disney

nikki — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 13:01:17 +0000

Summer is the perfect time to take a family vacation and what better place to go than to a Disney theme park?

The innovation and ideas at Disney never stop. In fact, last summer, the idea people at Disney came up with a new way to feel phantom objects floating in the air.

The idea concept of AIREAL was a result of the research by University of Illinois PhD student Rajinder Sodhi and Disney Research’s Ivan Poupyrey.

The AIREAL puffs air rings allow a person to actually feel objects and textures in mid-air without the need for special controllers or gloves.

This invention is essentially a set of five speakers in a box that tracks a person’s body and then fires low frequencies through a nozzle, in order to form donut-like vortices.

Furthermore, AIREAL can do a myriad of things from creating a button for you to touch in mid-air to creating whole textures by pulsing the bubbles to mimic water, stone and sand.

There also is a convenience factor included in this invention, due to the fact that a single AIREAL could support multiple people and a grid of this invention could create extremely immersive rooms, which could produce a sensation, like a flock of birds flying by, for instance.

Not to mention, this new technology is designed to use a vortex or a ring of air that can travel great distances, all the while keeping its shape and speed. When the vortex touches the user’s skin, the low pressure system inside collapses and reveals a force that the user can feel.

But, as if this invention couldn’t get any cooler, it’s actually almost entirely 3D-printed using a 3D-printed enclosure, a flexible nozzle and a pan and tilt gimbal structure that is capable of a 75-degree targeting field. The flexible nozzle is what allows a vortex to be precisely delivered to a location in 3D space.

This invention is part of Disney’s long-term vision for creating large-scale computer augmented environments that can deliver interactive experiences seamlessly at any time, everywhere.

The free air tactile feedback technology also is a key component of these future interactive inventions and offers a wide range of opportunities, including gaming and storytelling, mobile interfaces and gesture controls among a myriad of others.

Take a look at this video to get a better look at Disney’s AIREAL:

Copyright Davison 2014

Sources:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1673054/disneys-crazy-invention-lets-you-feel-phantom-objects-floating-in-air#2

http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/aireal/

Media:

http://www.disneyresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/AIREALVortexRing1.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaFBjUJj00M

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Drawing Inspiration From the Forefathers of Creativity

Kristi Russell — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 17:09:58 +0000

Most who hold creativity dear have drawn upon precedents set by a handful of inspirational forces. As many of you know, George Davison has long been a huge Disney fan.

In fact, on the Kiski School (Mr. Davison’s alma mater) website, adviser Andy Scott describes the atmosphere of Inventionland as being “right out of Walt Disney.”

Project Magazine writes: “With a company wholly focused on people having big ideas, Davison wanted to create a workspace that would encourage expansive thinking, with more of a child’s view of what is possible than a grown up take on what is practical. The result is something like Disneyland with desktops.”

But despite Walt Disney’s creative prowess, according to NPR, he most definitely had at least one inspiration for his world-famous parks, characters and brand.

“Walt Disney was so enthralled during a visit [to Tivoli], he said he wanted his parks to emulate Tivoli’s ‘happy, unbuttoned atmosphere of fun.’ Tivoli is part Disney, part Iowa State Fair,” writes Eleanor Beardsley.

Beardsley writes about Tivoli:

“Long before there was Disney, there was Tivoli, the second-oldest amusement park in the world. (The oldest, Dyrehavsbakken, or Deer Park Hill, is also in Denmark.) For nearly 170(!) years, people have been enjoying the magic of a summer night here.

Founded in 1843 and inspired by the romantic pleasure gardens in Europe of the day, Tivoli’s founder, George Carstensen, convinced Denmark’s King Christian VIII to give him the land by telling him, ‘When the people are amusing themselves, they do not think about politics.’

Certainly politics seems to be the farthest thing from anyone’s mind here on one recent night.

‘For the Danish people, it is our national garden. It’s a symbol of Copenhagen, a wonderful amusement park, a wonderful place to come,’ says Tom Holstubro, who is stretched out on the grass, enjoying the classic pantomime ballet held in one of the park’s historic, open-air theaters.”

Plato said that necessity is the mother of all invention. At Davison we recognize that creating a great product takes much more, including — but not limited to — necessity, inspiration and creativity. Don’t despair if you think your idea might be unoriginal, because as Charles Caleb Colton said, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” And as George Davison says, one can always find “a better way!”

Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/08/15/158870832/on-denmarks-summer-nights-tivoli-gardens-beckon

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