Imagineer Lanny Smoot to be inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame
Lanny Smoot, the Disney Research Fellow and Imagineer behind special effects like making Madame Leota float inside the Haunted Mansion and the state-of-the art Star Wars lightsabers, is being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Smoot is the first Disney Imagineer to receive this recognition and only the second individual from The Walt Disney Company to be inducted — the first being Walt Disney, honored posthumously for the multiplane camera.
With 106 career patents so far, Smoot is Disney’s most prolific inventor. He has developed forward-thinking technologies that allow the company, and the theatrical community at large, to create cutting-edge experiences, illusions and entertainment
He and his team have patented an improved, realistic, extendable and retractable lightsaber that mimics the Star Wars movie special effects and another that enables theme park guests to battle a training droid and deflect laser blasts. That latter was used as part of the entertainment when the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel outside the Disney’s Hollywood Studios was open. He also holds patents on large-scale interactive games, robotic eyes, new concepts for ride vehicles.
“I love technology in and of itself and being an individual contributor, but early on, I realized that each person has a special talent, sometimes multiple talents, but to be successful one needs to partner with other people who are good at what they do,” Smoot said.
Smoot is one of 15 innovation pioneers whose inventions range from cancer treatments to theatrical technologies and special effects to be honored in the 2024 class of National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees. The class was announced Wednesday evening at the Walt Disney Imagineering campus in Glendale.
Smoot was born in 1955 in New York City. As a child, he said he remember, his father brought home a battery, an electric bell and a light bulb, and he wired them together so that the bell would ring, and the bulb would light. From then on, Smoot learned all he could about science and engineering.
As a child, his STEM role models were from Uhura from “Star Trek” and Barney from “Mission: Impossible.”
Smoot attended Brooklyn Technical High School and was named a Bell Labs Engineering Scholar, earning a full scholarship to Columbia University, summer work at Bell Labs and a guarantee of full-time work with the company after graduation.
At Bellcore, Smoot patented some of the very first fiber-optic technologies to be widely used in the Bell Telephone network, as well as developing and patenting early video streaming and teleconferencing systems. His Large-Screen Teleconferencing system was featured in the Smithsonian Institution’s “Information Age” exhibit, and his Bellcore VideoWindow system was demonstrated to Al Gore and Tom Tauke’s “Information Age” Congressional Subcommittee.
