Curious by Design, describes my journey of invention, imagination, and the occasional malfunctioning animatronic.
From an untethered childhood to designing the world’s most complex theme park attractions, Steve Alcorn has spent a lifetime exploring the crossroads of art and engineering. Along the way, he’s built companies, created rides, composed music, coded operating systems, mentored thousands of writers—and still found time to sculpt a few nudes.
Spanning decades of creative adventure, this is the story of one man’s relentless curiosity: how things work, how stories are told, and how a life can be built one experiment at a time.
Told with warmth, wit, and a clear-eyed love of learning, Curious by Design is for anyone who’s ever straddled the worlds of science and art—or wondered if they really had to choose.
Whether you’re a theme park fan, an aspiring author, or just someone with a lifelong case of “how does that work?”, this book offers insight, inspiration, and a few laugh-out-loud detours.
I’m Steve Alcorn, entrepreneur, author and teacher. This site offers some insights into my occupation, avocations, and history. Welcome!
I grew up in Los Angeles, went to Harvard School for Boys (now Harvard-Westlake), and UCLA.
I’ve always been entrepreneurial, and even as a kid had companies that sold comics, did letterpress printing, made electronic guitar fuzz boxes and operated a sound studio.
In 1978 I married my high school sweetheart, Linda McBride, and in 1991 we had a daughter Dani.
My first “real company was MicroDaSys, a pre-PC era computer maker.
In 1982 I joined Walt Disney Imagineering (then known as WED Enterprises) as a consultant, where I worked on the electronic systems for Epcot Center’s American Adventure, the park-wide monitoring system, and Journey Into Imagination, where I became WED’s first systems engineer.
I learned a bit more about management during a brief stint in the peripherals industry, where I had an engineering department of 40, but the entertainment industry called to me. I was Vice President of Engineering and later Chief Operating Officer for Linn Electronics, the inventors of the digital drum machine.
In 1986 I founded Alcorn McBride, the company that makes the audio/video players and control systems used in nearly all of the world’s theme parks.
Since 2024 I’ve been working on BrainStream Ltd., a Canadian Tech startup for AI Education, where I am the CEO.
I’ve written both fiction and non-fiction books.
I teach online classes, some with my daughter, Dani, through her company, Writing Academy.
I also teach a class in Imagineering.
I enjoy travel, and sharing old wines with friends.