Donald Duck's uncle was partly based on Wernher von Braun

Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Minimize to nav Did you know that the first character that Walt Disney created to specifically appear on television was inspired, in part, ? On this day 65 years ago (September 24, 1961), Disney introduced the “renowned scientist, lecturer, psychologist [and] world traveler,” Ludwig Von Drake. A member of the Duck family (he is the “brilliant and eccentric” uncle of Donald Duck), Von Drake was “the outstanding genius of the century” (per Disney himself) who helped to explain scientific principles and technological concepts to the millions of people who tuned in every Sunday to watch Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on NBC. A few years later, after expertly (but often absent-mindedly) addressing topics such as how color television works, the health benefits of exercising, and the history of aviation, Von Drake dove into the topic for which he said he wrote the book on, in the February 10, 1963, episode “Inside Outer Space.” “You people out there are going to see stars you have never seen before… when you go traveling in outer space. Credit: NASA Wernher von Braun (center) discusses a “bottle suit” model with Heinz Haber (left), an expert on aviation medicine, and Willy Ley, a science writer on rocketry and space exploration in 1964. Credit: NASA Tomorrowland As it turns out, Von Drake was not wrong—well, maybe not about the cost of his book, but about the part about being obsolete. The show reused animation from earlier Disneyland TV episodes, “Man and the Moon,” “Man in Space,” and “Mars and Beyond,” which first aired on December 4, 1957, two months after the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite. Produced well before the first human lifted off for space, the shows were speculative and even fantastical at times, especially when compared to what we know about spaceflight today. “Inside Outer Space” premiered four years later, two Soviet cosmonauts had orbited Earth, and two American astronauts had completed suborbital missions, milestones that go unmentioned . The reused clips were not, however, the only way that Von Drake crossed histories with the three earlier space-themed episodes. Von Drake From left to right, Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, Walt Disney and Heinz Haber during the 1955 production of Disney’s “Tomorowland” TV episodes devoted to the future of space flight and exploration. Credit: The Walt Disney Company From left to right, Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, Walt Disney and Heinz Haber during the 1955 production of Disney’s “Tomorowland” TV episodes devoted to the future of space flight and exploration.