A dancing waters routine at the new Royal Nevada hotel-casino upstaged big-money entertainers — Carmen Miranda, Danny Thomas, Liberace and others — in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The five fountains of colored water (30 tons of it) frolicked to waltzes and mambos played by an orchestra. Hans Hasslach, who introduced the attraction to the U.S. in 1953, operated the $250,000 ($2.2 million today) array of pipes of various designs via a console containing 400 attached buttons. He had 20 distinct water designs to work with, which he could mix in many ways.