And this makes perfect sense when you consider its origin story: Disneyland was brought to life through television. With his ideal theme park in mind, Disney initially thought the project would take shape as a tourist attraction next to his animation studios in Burbank, California, but ultimately decided there wasn’t enough room there, and that the studios themselves didn’t have that much to offer visitors. Instead, he approached ABC about creating a show called Disneyland, in exchange for which the network would provide funding to build the real thing. Construction began in the summer of 1954, and the finished park was unveiled on ABC during a live press event in July 1955. Disney’s own lifespan (1901–1966) encapsulated the great leaps of the 20th century. He personally experienced the shift from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles, followed by one innovation after another: airplanes, space flight, movies and television, early computers, plastic, and atomic energy. Disney’s own parents grew up during the gilded age (indeed, his father worked at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893) and “the future,” from his perspective, was the space age.

In 1955, when Disneyland opened, it comprised a series of “lands.” Some capture the look and feel of an imagined past, like Frontierland, which evokes the Old West, and Main Street, U.S.A., which is inspired by a turn of the 20th-century Midwestern town, in which the use of forced perspective makes the reduced-scale buildings appear larger than they really are. Others offered visions of the future, like Tomorrowland, for which real NASA scientists, including Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, and Heinz Haber offered technical advice. Key attractions in 1955 included the Aluminum Hall of Fame, the Hall of Chemistry, the TWA Moonliner, and Autopia—a very 20th-century, car-centric vision of “tomorrow.”