All Hail the Mighty Microscope!

Once upon a time, there was no “Star Tours” at Disneyland. Instead, Monsanto sponsored “Journey through Inner Space,” where folks would be “miniaturized” and injected into a snowflake, ultimately shrinking to a size where an individual oxygen atom could be viewed. It was great, kitschy fun, moderately educational, an amazing PR generator for Monsanto, and, sadly, not nearly cool enough to not be replaced by a George Lucas production (itself badly in need of some updating, these many years later).

The centerpiece of the ride was the Mighty Microsope (lower left), which was part of the miniaturization process — indeed, as you were queueing up for the ride, you could actually see people in little cars, already miniaturized, being injected down the tube.

Too frickin’ cool.

(The MM got one minor memorial in its demolition, showing up briefly in the “Star Tours” ride as a piece of equipment the shuttle passes by on its careening ride out of the space port.)

Now someone has created a 3-D walk-thru of the ride — or so BoingBoing claims, though the site is now coming up “temporarily unavailable.” I’ll have to check it out next week …

Lots of childhood memories locked up there …