One of the sons of Ub Iwerks, Don Iwerks was born on July 24, 1929, and followed his father to Disney, joining the company in 1950 as a laboratory technician. He worked briefly for the company before being drafted into the Korean War, where he served in Frankfurt, Germany, for two years in an Army Signal Corps Photo Company. When he returned to the U.S., he immediately went back to work at Disney, having decided to forego formal education.
He soon transferred to the fabled Studio Machine Shop, where he was eventually offered a camera technician position and went to work on his first film for the Studio, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He eventually headed both the Machine Shop and Camera Service Department, as well as the Technical Engineering and Manufacturing Division, all along the way displaying his father’s flair for technological innovation by developing cameras, projectors, and other systems for Disneyland, Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, and Epcot. […]
