Imagineering

Imagineering is a portmanteau word that combines "imagination" and "engineering." So far, the first verifiable use of the term is a January 22, 1942 article from The Cullman Banner (Cullman, Alabama);

"New Noun -- War brings new words -- or brings back old ones in new attire. Remember "camouflage," "strafing," "canteen" and "doughboy" of World War I? Here's a brand-new one, a child of World War II: "Imagineering." A combination of imagination and engineering, it's defined as "the fine art of deciding where we go from here," and it just grew (like Topsy) in the research laboratories of Aluminum Company of America."

Other notable pre-Disney usages include an October 24, 1942 mention in the New York Times in an article titled "Christian Imagineering," a 1944 Oxford English Dictionary entry which cites an advertisement from the Wall Street Journal, and the use by artist Arthur C Radebaugh to describe his work, which was mentioned in the article "Black Light Magic" in the Portsmouth Times, Portsmouth, Ohio, 1947.

In 1957, Richard F. Sailer used the term (possibly coined independently) for the article "BRAINSTORMING IS IMAGINation enginEERING" in an in-house magazine for the National Carbon Company, a subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation. The term may have gravitated to Disney through the association of Union Carbide with the movie industry (Union Carbide won numerous early technical Oscars) or through an association of executives Gilbert Decker (Disney) and Richard A. Conway (Union Carbide). Decker and Conway worked together on projects during the war.

Imagineering may refer to:

• Walt Disney Imagineering, the design and construction management group for the theme park division of Disney.
• Imagineering, a New Jersey based video game company which was folded into Absolute in 1994.
• Imagineering, a microcomputer software and hardware distributor founded by Australian businessman Jodee Rich.
• Imagineering, a field of study at the Imagineering Academy, NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands, Europe, since 1993.