There may be no address on the face of the Earth with more geniuses in it than 1401 Flower St. in Glendale, California, the home of Walt Disney Imagineering. The people who bring to life all of the incredible attractions at the Disney Parks that we love are clearly brilliant. There's always something new at Disney World to blow us away. but Imagineer Lanny Smoot is in a class by himself. Last week he became the first Imagineer since the organization’s founding to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. However, he is actually the second person at the Walt Disney Company to receive this honor, something he admits he was, very briefly, disappointed about... until he learned who beat him in.
I had the chance to speak with Lanny Smoot recently about his induction into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame and the different things he has invented for Disney Parks over the years. He revealed that it was only after he was made aware of his own induction that he was told that somebody else at Disney had received the honor first. This made Smoot a little disappointed. He told me…
I only learned after I was told about [the induction], that I was the second person at our company to receive the honor and I was a little disappointed. I thought I was the first.
Lanny Smoot is probably used to blazing trails and being the first to do a lot of things. He’s an African-American man in a field where most of the people he works with don’t look like him. He has 106 patents to his name (with likely more on the way). He’s a professional inventor, which is, in itself, a job title that few people in the world probably have.
However, Smoot’s “disappointment” quickly turned to a very different emotion when he was told who he was following into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Here’s a hint, his name is on the building where Lanny Smoot works. The Imagineer continued…
Then I found out that the first was Walter Elias Disney. Oh my god, lump in the throat. A little bit of emotion, and a little bit of a weight on my shoulders to even be considered with Walt. Come on. That's amazing.
In 2000, Walt Disney himself was posthumously inducted into the Hall for his work creating the Multiplane Camera, the camera created to give Disney’s animation a feeling of depth that the medium had never seen before. Smoot is still the first Imagineer to receive the honor, which, considering the creativity and quite literal inventiveness that Imagineering has shown us over the years, is still an incredible accomplishment.
Lanny Smoot's accomplishments over the years include creating the extendable lightsaber that was used at Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. He's also improved some of the best Disneyland attractions, such as making the head of Madame Leota at the Haunted Mansion float inside her crystal ball.
Lanny Smoot is one of a kind, even if he's not the first member of The Walt Disney Company inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame. If you’re going to be the second person to do literally anything, you’re in pretty good shape if the first was Walt Disney.
