Great Moments in Pinball History

Despite all the Blather about airplanes and racing cars, the ultimate commingling of man and machine still takes place at the silk-smooth flipper buttons of a well-tuned pinball machine. No other human endeavor so involves skills of mind and body with the challenging intricacies of a mechanical toy. Nowhere else are the rewards as rich, the sorrows as devastating. Except for its ability to preoccupy for hours or even days at a time, pinball playing could be compared to making love. Both acts are sources of a pleasure better experienced than described. Both improve with practice and respond to innovation. And both can prove satisfying day after day for an entire lifetime, as refinements in technique supplant flagging desire and increasing familiarity.

Not surprising, when you think about it. While not as old as lovemaking itself, pinball far preceded airplanes, automobiles or other mechanical gadgets through which men express themselves. The contemporary pinball machine had its ancestor in the bagatelle board, a billiardlike gaming device whose origins are lost in antiquity. The first literary reference to pinball--in chapter 14 of Pickwick Papers--mentions one of. these: Members of the Pickwick Club visited the (continued on page 260)Great Moments(continued from page 162) Peacock Tavern and "beguiled their time chiefly with such amusements as the Peacock afforded, which were limited to a bagatelle board on the first floor."

Until the Depression, bagatelle remained a beguiling but obscure parlor game, whose interest was limited by its flat playing surface (which produced little action) and its requirement that balls be shot with bats or cue sticks (which required a large playing surface and lots of space).

The first mass-marketed coin-operated bagatelle board with tilted playing surface and plunger-shot balls took America by storm in 1930, compliments of an entrepreneur named David Gottlieb, who got his insights into coin-operated entertainment while running a string of test-your-grip machines in Texas during the late Twenties. His creation was a tabloidsized box called Baffle Ball, lovingly fabricated out of honest walnut and brass, today a cherished collector's item. In less than a year, Gottlieb sold 50,000 of them--at $17.50 apiece. Depression-haggard Americans were all too happy to purchase the ephemeral escape of seven clinking steel ball bearings for just one cent.

Competition erupted quickly. A young Chicago businessman named Raymond Moloney played a few games of Baffle Ball, got the fever and designed his own machine, Bally-Hoo. The manufacture was first done by Gottlieb, but as sales approached the 70,000 mark, Moloney began making them on his own. His firm (now the Bally Manufacturing Corporation) and Gottlieb's (D. Gottlieb and Company) are still giants in the industry.

As it turned out, one of the few economic successes of the early Thirties was the emergence of the coin-operated entertainment business. Pinball machines were to the Thirties what fast-food franchises were to the Sixties. The business was to prove disastrous to many who entered it, but it made money in an area where none had been made before. Coin-operated machines had existed for decades--jukeboxes, movie machines, all sorts of vending devices--but their rewards were either random or predictable. Skill was never a factor.

From the first, pinball changed all that. Even at Baffle Ball or Bally-Hoo, skillful ejection of the ball was rewarded appropriately. Ultimately, a player's success--as recorded in his final score--hinged on his ability to shoot the ball well and then nudge it around the playfield ("gunch it" is the pinballer's phrase) to his advantage.

Besides the psychological rewards they offered to skillful players (not to mention the money they could make hustling pigeons), pinball machines proved a bonanza to those who owned or operated them. A typical early machine cost under $20 and paid for itself in a week. Everything after that was gravy. A few years after the appearance of Baffle Ball, every other saloon and gas station in America had its seven-balls-for-a-penny amusement machine and no lack of players. In fact, by 1932, the market was so saturated that most observers thought it could go no further. Gottlieb himself produced a machine called Five Star Final, so named because he figured it would be the last pinball machine ever produced.

He was wrong. The use of electrical circuitry, one year later, added a whole new dimension of play. The early electric machines incorporated four dry cells that powered lights and rang an occasional bell; 24 volts is still the standard pinball current. The first solenoid was used in the playfield of Fleet in 1935, adding an essential element of action. Other innovations shortly followed: electronic tilt devices, automatic scoring, free games, thumper-bumpers, roll-overs, you name it. Then, just after World War Two, a legendary pinball designer named Harry Mabs joined a solenoid to a rubber bat. added a button so that the player could control the action and gave the world the flipper. This device is so fundamental to pinball that not a single machine has been produced without it since. (Bingo machines are the exception, but these are hardly more than gambling devices, where skill is not a factor.) In France and elsewhere in Europe, pinball machines are generally described as les flippers. For the record, the flipper was first used commercially in a Gottlieb machine called Humpty Dumpty, a six-flipper model marketed in late 1947, now also a collector's item.

Many innovations were to follow--asymmetrical playfields, drum scoring counters, multiple-player games, messenger balls, captive balls, free balls, extra balls--but all these were refinements, rather than breakthroughs. Manufacturers and designers would probably disagree, but there hasn't been a real technical breakthrough in pinball machines since the flipper. What we've seen, instead, has been the gradual refinement o£ existing technology. And in an age of electronics, the result is marvelous to behold.

The absence of recent innovations makes flipper machines especially attractive toys for individuals who want to buy one for their own apartment or game room. A new model might be better looking, but a used one can be just as much fun, and considerably cheaper. New or used, the machine will be adjusted to start play at the touch of a button, no coins required. Play-for-pay machines usually require licenses and are actually illegal in some benighted cities and towns; but a flipper machine set for free play is legal anywhere--as it should be.

Buying a pinball machine for your very own is easy and individuals are buying them as never before. The process is best understood in light of the basic structure of the pinball industry. In production and distribution, one can draw a striking parallel between pinball machines and automobiles. There are the Big Three manufacturers (Bally, Gottlieb and Williams, a division of Seeburg Corporation), a few lesser competitors (Chicago Coin and Allied Leisure) and the increasing threat of import competition--most notably from Sega, a Japanese firm that's actually a division of the Gulf and Western conglomerate. Sega machines clatter all over Asia but have not seriously penetrated these shores.

You can't buy a Dodge directly from Chrysler, and you can't buy a pinball machine directly from the people who make them. Instead, you must go to a distributor, of which there are plenty. These are listed, usually under the heading "Amusement Machines," in Yellow Pages virtually everywhere. Distributors make their living selling or leasing machines to arcade operators. In a well-run arcade, a typical machine won't stay on the floor more than six months, since operators feel that a steady turnover is necessary for continuing profits. Thus, distributors stock a vast number of different models, both new and used, any of which they will sell outright to individuals. They also accept trade-ins.

The choice of what machine to buy is as personal as choosing an automobile. If you're going to put the thing in your living room--many folks do--you'll want a color that fits your decor. Happily, you'll find a broad spectrum from which to pick. If this is your first machine, you'll do well to confine your search to products of the Big Three manufacturers, whose technology is basically identical. Within this stricture, your choice is your own. Williams seems to have a talent for producing especially challenging one-player devices. Arcade operators tend to prefer Gottlieb machines, because, on location, they apparently make the most money. And serious pinballers tend to favor Bally machines, whose complex playfields and huge scoring possibilities whet their insatiable appetite for action.

Whatever the manufacturer, the purchase of a four-player machine is recommended. These are far and away the most versatile, since they can be played by one, two, three or four persons. More to the point, they represent the top of the manufacturer's flipper line--manifested in jazzy artwork, innovative features, complex play action and over-all manufacturing quality. A single four-player machine can transform a dull party into a memorable all-nighter. On a more serious level, competitive play, where different players vie for top score in the same game, tends to bring out quintessential pinball skills. Experienced pinballers always achieve their best scores under the pressure of competition, rather than solitaire. To a lesser extent, this same competitive edge can be achieved on a two-player machine. And for those souls who best excel in competition with themselves, a one-player model should suffice. Just as Chevrolets used to catch tail fins from Cadillacs, four-player models still tend to spawn two-player and one-player variations. So if you look hard enough, you can probably find precisely the machine that suits you.

Distributors are sometimes reluctant to sell them, but even brand-new models are surprisingly cheap. Prices vary from one distributor to another, so comparison shopping is always rewarded. As a general rule, a new four-player machine sells for around $900. Two-player models are around $725 and one-player machines go for $650 or so. Good used machines, say between four and eight years old, are plentifully available for between $150 and $300. More recent used models are somewhat scarcer and proportionately more expensive.

One of the minor headaches of pinball ownership is getting service for breakdowns. In the pantheon of electronic devices, flipper machines are extremely well made. They have to be, considering the punishment they take. Still, occasional malfunctions are to be expected. Players with a smattering of electronic know-how can actually fix about 90 percent of these failures, most of which involve lubricating bearings, replacing blown-out bulbs and fuses or realigning faulty contacts. (A maintenance packet accompanies every machine; insist on receiving it.) More serious difficulties--burned-out coils or broken wires are the commonest of these--will probably require a house call. Here the owner is best off if he has purchased his toy from a distributor who services machines as well as sells them. These are a fast-growing minority and the would-be buyer is advised to seek them out. Free-lance repair service is also available, but it's relatively expensive: perhaps $25 (plus parts) for a brief house call. Rather steep, but worth it, because an imperfect pinball machine is as frustrating and as dissonant as an untuned piano. Big-time players actually have their personal machines "tuned" periodically, even when nothing seems wrong with them--the way a Ferrari owner might send his 250GT to the shop periodically for an admiring checkup. Pinballing excellence demands perfection from machine as well as from player. And in pursuit of the perfectly played game--a goal as illusory and as compelling as the quest for the Holy Grail--no one should settle for less.

A true believer

high scores in the life of a pinball freak

The following poured forth--clackity, clackity--from a free-lance pinball repairman who appeared one day at the Playboy editorial offices to perform minor surgery on an ailing left flipper:

"I've been into pin machines in a big way since I was eight or nine years old. I used to stand up on old fruit boxes--remember those old wooden boxes that oranges came in?--so that I could reach the flipper buttons.

"I finished high school in Kansas City, but mostly played pinball. Then I bummed around the country for a year or two, just playing pinball. The South, mostly, is where they gamble a lot on pin machines. I never liked bingo machines much, because they don't have flippers, you know? It's really not a game of skill without flippers. But if you're playing for a living, like I was, you can't be too choosy. Sometimes you got to play the bingo machines to eat. The operators pay off down there--especially in Louisiana. I bet there's more bingo machines in Louisiana than anywhere else in the world. And there's a place at the New Orleans airport--an arcade--where the manufacturers test their newest flipper models. It's a sort of Las Vegas for pinball players. Big time players come there from all over. I lived in that place for six weeks, man, six weeks. I never left the airport. I'd sleep in the chairs in the waiting room and hustle soldiers at the pin machines.

"Now I got a steady job, fixing pin machines. I'm 25, you know? Time I was settling down. I got my own apartment--just one room, but I got three machines in it. Also a bed. I've got a Four Million B. C.--that's a Bally machine like Fireball, really an earlier version of Fireball. The skill features are mainly the same, but the play isn't as good. Also, I have a Fire Chief, the first pin machine with an electronic backboard, you know? That's a rare machine, from before World War Two. I had to restore it almost from scratch.

"Girls really dig pinball machines, you know? I get girls up to my place, get them into the machines, turn out all the lights, so that all we have is the flickering colors and the clicking relays and the bells from my pins, and then--well, listen to this:

"About a month ago, my girl was playing one of my machines and I was balling her from behind, you know? We sometimes like it that way, while she plays the machines. She was playing Four Million B. C. and she had over 80,000 points on the first ball. The first ball, man. Well, on the second ball, she went over 100,000, and then, just as she hit the volcano--that's the big apple on Four Million B. C.--she came. She lost all three balls. They just drained right down; she never even flipped. I think she finished up at 120,000 or so. Not a bad score, but nothing great, either."