Eight Short Films Feature an AI-Voiced Time-Traveling Historian, Built from Recorded Samples of Curator Susan Gillis, to Bring a Century of Boca Raton History to the Screen
In a city whose history includes literally helping invent the future — the personal computer was born here — the past is now getting a very fitting sequel. The Boca Raton Historical Society (BRHS) and The Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum have launched a new digital film series that uses artificial intelligence to bring the city’s history to the screen, one story at a time.
The eight-part series, now streaming free at bocahistory.org/films, spans more than a century of Boca Raton’s past, from the pioneers who built its first neighborhoods to the engineers who helped build the modern computer industry.
Each short film is narrated by an AI-voiced “time-traveling historian,” built using recorded samples of Museum Curator Susan Gillis’s own voice. The approach allows the Museum to turn its deep archive of historic photographs and research into polished, easily shareable videos — most running just over a minute — without the cost of a traditional documentary production.
The series’ first eight films include:
Pearl City
Established in 1915, Pearl City is Boca Raton’s oldest neighborhood, founded by Black pioneers who helped build the young city and became a cornerstone of its early development.
Building Historic Town Hall
Built in 1927, Boca Raton’s Town Hall became the center of civic life in the young community. Discover the story of this beloved landmark and the many roles it has played in Boca Raton’s history as it celebrates a century of service.
Boca Raton Army Air Field
How a World War II training base transformed a small farm town almost overnight, built in part on land once farmed by the Japanese settlers of the Yamato Colony, whose story is also told in the series.
Old Floresta: Mizner’s Neighborhood
One of only 29 homes built as part of architect Addison Mizner’s original 1920s vision for Boca Raton, Old Floresta remains one of the best-preserved glimpses of what Mizner set out to build before the Florida land boom collapsed.
IBM: The Birth of the Personal Computer
In 1980, a secretive twelve-person engineering team in Boca Raton — working under a one-year deadline and the code name “Acorn” — built the machine that would define an industry. The IBM PC sold nearly twice its projected volume in its first eighteen months, and in 1983 TIME magazine named it “Machine of the Year,” the first time the honor had ever gone to an object rather than a person.
The Addison: Mizner’s Enduring Legacy
Architect Addison Mizner arrived in Boca Raton in 1925 with backers that included Elizabeth Arden, Irving Berlin, and the Vanderbilts, and a vision for a canal-laced resort city modeled on Venice. His administration building — now the event venue known as The Addison — is one of the few pieces of that vision that survived the Florida land bust of 1926.
Africa U.S.A.: Boca’s Wild Side
Long before Lion Country Safari, Boca Raton was home to America’s first cageless wildlife park. Opened in 1953 by John and Lillian Pedersen, Africa U.S.A. drew 300,000 visitors a year and landed on the cover of Life magazine before closing in 1961.
The Story of Yamato
In 1905, Jo Sakai led a group of Japanese settlers to found the Yamato Colony, a pioneering farming community on land that would later become part of the Boca Raton Army Air Field.
“There’s something fitting about using cutting-edge technology to tell the story of a city that helped build the personal computer,” said Susan Gillis, Curator of The Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum. “These films let us take stories that used to live only in our archives and put them in front of people wherever they are — on their phones, on social media, wherever they’re scrolling. That’s one way you keep local history alive for the next generation.”
The full film series is available now, free to watch, at bocahistory.org/films.
About the Boca Raton Historical Society
Founded in 1972, the Boca Raton Historical Society (BRHS) is a private, nonprofit member organization dedicated to collecting, preserving, and presenting the history of Boca Raton. BRHS is headquartered in Historic Town Hall, built in 1926 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and owns and operates The Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum, home to the History Alive! exhibits along with rotating special exhibitions. BRHS is counting down to the 100th anniversary of Historic Town Hall in 2027. Through museum exhibits, lectures, tours, and community events, BRHS maintains a visible role in education and historic preservation throughout the community. For more information, visit bocahistory.org.
