WEBVTT - The Southern Fried Gaming Expo and Pinball 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:12.360 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.440 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:18.759 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:23.040 tech are you? So? Just this past weekend, I was 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:27.639 invited to attend an event called the Southern Fried Gaming 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:31.960 Expo here in Atlanta, Georgia. I attended as media. So 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:35.000 big thanks to the Expo for allowing me to come 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:38.720 in and check it out. I really appreciate it. This conference, 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:44.040 this convention, this gaming Expo is founded in twenty fourteen 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:48.360 by a group of pinball and arcade enthusiasts, and it's 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:52.599 an annual event in which gaming fans from across multiple 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:56.960 platforms and genres all come together and they can trade 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:00.640 and buy and sell and play games. That includes all 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.160 sorts of games like you've got your pinball and your 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:07.479 arcade machines. Many of those arcade machines are quite obscure, 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.240 like you could call them classic titles because they date 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.320 back to like the seventies and eighties. But good gollie, 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.680 I ran into ones that I had never heard of before. 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.880 And I've played a lot of arcade games, but you 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:24.200 also have console games there, you've got tabletop games. It's 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:28.800 kind of a mecha of gaming and a great community too, 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.920 really interesting group of folks who are wandering around and 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:37.640 playing different games, and the expo includes many different activities. 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:39.600 You know, of course, you can do all the playing 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.080 and buying, selling and all that sort of stuff, but 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:46.160 they are also panel discussions ranging from history lessons to 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:49.360 advice on how to maintain a machine of your own 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.040 or even design one if you were so inclined and 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:56.840 like elements of game design, which is pretty cool. They 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:01.360 had musical performances and occasionally professional wrestling. There are vendors 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:05.920 selling game adjacent stuff like clothing or dice towers, or 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:09.320 source books or jams and jellies. It was a fun event. 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.839 I really did enjoy my time there, but it got 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:14.960 me thinking I should do an episode on the evolution 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:19.400 of the pinball machine. Now I have done an episode 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:22.360 about pinball. There was a classic episode of Tech Stuff 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.440 where I covered it, but I feel like the subject 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:28.280 actually needs a deeper dive and we'll need a couple 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.760 of episodes to cover because pinball has a history that's 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:36.480 really fascinating. You've got the evolution of mechanical, like purely 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:41.640 mechanical machines to electro mechanical pinball machines up to modern 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:46.120 day electronic and computer based pinball machines. When I say 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:50.000 computer based, I mean the micro controllers and stuff are 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:54.359 overseen by a fairly simple computer, but a computer nonetheless 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.880 in some modern pinball machines. But obviously you also have 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:03.080 pinball games that are computer games, right, like simulations of 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:06.200 pinball machines. That's kind of a different thing. I'm not 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:08.959 really going to talk about that. So let us dive 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:13.480 into the fascinating story of pinball, because it's also got 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:17.880 a lot of politics and crime and moral panic wrapped 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:20.920 up in it. Now. The story itself is tricky to 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:23.520 tell because pinball is one of those things that evolved 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:28.680 rather organically from other activities, and I maintain it's largely 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:31.720 a matter of opinion as to what constitutes the first 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:35.680 pinball machine, Like there are a lot of contenders that 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.440 could potentially claim that title, and I think it all 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:42.400 depends on what components need to be there for you 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.240 to call it a pinball machine, Like what does a 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.920 pinball machine actually need to have for it to be 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:52.600 considered an actual pinball machine. Would it need to have pins, 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:55.960 not all pinball machines do. Does it need to have flippers? 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:59.320 Does it need to have a ball presumably a coin 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:03.520 slot like a score keeping system? What is it? But 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:08.680 whether we can definitively proclaim a specific instance as the 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:12.560 first pinball machine or not, we can still talk about 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:17.320 its origins. So before there were pinball machines, there were 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:21.320 lawn games. Now, some of these games shared a resemblance 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:24.719 to golf, which required an awful lot of land to 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.120 play on. Most people did not have a lawn large 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.480 enough to have a golf course on. Golf dates back 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:34.599 as far as the fifteenth century, with King James the 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:39.000 Second of Scotland famously outlawing the sport in fourteen fifty 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.240 seven because he really needed to get the Scots, you know, 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.600 trained up for war, but they were too busy golfing. 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.640 So golf was seen as a distraction and something that 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:55.080 unseerious people would pursue, and Jimmy's ban on golf would 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:58.200 serve as one of the earliest, if not the actual 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:03.080 earliest record of the sp itself golf getting banned. So 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.119 it really is like pinball, But that's that's getting ahead 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:10.880 of myself. Anyway, lawn games became popular, and there were 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:15.320 lots of different variations, like you had bowls, you had croquete, 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:18.479 you had baci. But these games still required you to 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:21.560 actually have a lawn and they weren't great options if 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:24.359 the weather happened to be unpleasant, which it could be 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.880 in places like northern Europe. So what if you could 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.960 create games that evoked certain elements of lawn games, but 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.000 they were designed in such a way that they could 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:38.000 be played indoors, Then you'd have a Eureka moment. This 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:41.640 was what inspired the invention of parlor games like bagatel. 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:46.880 So in many ways, bagatel is similar to billiards or pool. 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.560 It'splayed on a table. Those original tables were quite large, 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.279 they were level, they were flat, right, they had no 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:57.480 mechanical elements at all. So the table had little divots 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:01.240 in it, and you would play bagatell with balls, and 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.600 you would use acoustic similar to billiards or pool, and 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:09.640 you would hit the ball toward these little divots, each 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:12.400 of which had an amount of points associated with them. 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:15.760 In some ways, I think a bagatel is similar to darts. 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:19.480 You've got a playing field with specific areas representing specific 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.880 point values, and your goal is to accumulate points by 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:27.120 firing a projectile at that playing field. Now, toward the 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:29.800 end of the nineteenth century, a chap with the name 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:35.240 Montague Andrew Elijah Redgrave came up with an idea to 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:39.719 enhance the old bagatel design and to miniaturize it. You know, 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:43.640 not everyone had space in their parlor for a dedicated 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:46.840 gaming table that was close to the size of a 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:51.880 billiard's table that just wasn't within everyone's you know means. 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.039 So Redgrave thought it might be keen to make a 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:58.240 Bagatelle table that was small enough to fit on a 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:01.039 normal tabletop, kind of like one of those small pinball 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:03.680 kits you sometimes see that are like a fifth the 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:06.640 size of a normal pinball table. Like a toy pinball 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.760 game is kind of similar to that. So this begatel 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:13.880 board would be played on an incline, so the top 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:18.600 of the playing field is an inch or two higher 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:22.160 than the base of the playfield. So the player would 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:24.280 need to shoot a ball, which would now be a 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:28.080 little marble sized ball instead of like a pool ball 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:31.600 sized ball. Shoot a ball up the playfield and then 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.920 the ball would naturally roll down this incline, and this 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.520 time you would have little holes in the playfield that 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:42.800 would represent points, but you would have pins pi ns 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:47.600 pins surrounding these holes and only allowing the ball to 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:49.800 pass through in certain points. Otherwise the ball would just 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.000 bounce off the pins and go somewhere else. So the 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:56.320 pins are kind of guarding the holes, and only a 0:07:56.960 --> 0:07:59.080 ball coming in at the right angle is going to 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.760 actually make it into the whole and thus score whatever 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:07.160 the points happened to be. Redgrave created a plunger in 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:11.200 order to propel the little marbles up the playfield, and 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:16.080 he used a metal spring for the actual plunger. So 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.640 if you pull back on the plunger, it would either 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:24.120 compress a spring or it would stretch out a spring, 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.000 depending upon how you designed the plunger. But this way 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.800 you store potential energy. Right once you release the plunger, 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:35.120 the spring quote unquote wants to get back to its 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:41.000 normal shape. It'll spring back to its normal shape and 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.679 thus pull the plunger forward, strike the ball, and knock 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:48.199 the ball up the playfield. These boards were very simple 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:53.200 and purely mechanical systems. The only mechanical element actually was 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:55.800 just the plunger. That you would use to fire the 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.280 ball up the incline to start the whole process. Everything 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:03.000 else was passive. There were no flippers, there were no bumpers, 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:06.320 there were no crazy gimmicks. There was no progressive score 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.240 a keeping system. There was no way to manipulate the 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:11.640 ball once you release the plunger, unless you were to 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:14.560 nudge or tilt the table. You could do that, but 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.520 you weren't supposed to, and so you could argue that 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.280 this game was largely a game of chance. Now you 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:22.440 could have a general feel for how far back you 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.480 should pull the plunger before releasing, so there was some 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:28.120 skill involved, but that was the best you could do, 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:31.000 and the wild wins of fortune would carry the game onward. 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:36.000 Monty Redgrave would file a patent for his tabletop bagtel 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:39.120 game in the eighteen seventies. It would be a bit 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.520 before we get to something really resembling what we think 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:44.720 of his pinball, but some basic components, like the pins, 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:48.640 the balls, the plunger, those were already present in this early, early, 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:52.920 early iteration. Again, keeping score was the responsibility of the players. 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:55.400 There was no progressive score keeping system, so you had 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:58.600 to like write it all down because the wooden board 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:01.480 could not do that for you. One thing that would 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:05.439 be a contributing factor to pinball eventually becoming a scandalous 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:09.520 activity is that some bars and pubs and things of 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:14.000 that nature, some shops would have bagatel boards where you 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:16.920 could play and you would pay a certain amount of 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:18.680 money and you would get a certain number of balls 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:21.400 for however much you paid. Typically we're talking like pennies 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:24.920 for like five balls or something, And if you were 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:27.240 to rack up a high enough score, you might win 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:31.319 yourself a free drink. So you'd pay the bartender, get 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:34.400 a bunch of balls, try and get your best score. 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.400 And this element of chance in the game made it 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.640 lean a little bit on the side of gambling. So, yes, 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:44.880 there was some skill to this too. It wasn't entirely 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:47.600 up to chance. Using just the right amount of finesse 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:49.440 to plunge a ball so that it's more likely to 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:52.120 go where you wanted it to go was part of it. 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:55.920 But a lot of that stuff really was up to chance, right, Like, 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:59.440 you could be really careful and still things might go 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.679 poor simply because of maybe there's a defect in the ball, 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:05.280 maybe there's a chip in the playfield. There could be 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:08.160 anything like that. So this means the games were tiptoeing 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.520 up to being classified as gambling, just as slot machines 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.800 would turn out to be. Okay, we're going to take 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:16.880 a quick break to thank our sponsors, but when we 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.800 come back, we'll talk more about the early days of 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:35.080 proto pinball. We're back now. I'm sure there were no 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:39.480 shortage of folks who created variations on Bagatel, like there 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:45.079 were probably lots of knockoffs and copies and iterations of Bagatel. 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:47.560 But the next bit that I feel is really important 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:52.040 for our exploration of pinball is the inclusion of coinslots. 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:55.400 So Bagtel for the longest time meant that you would 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:57.840 have to go and pay somebody who would keep the 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.680 balls like locked away, and they would give you the 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.040 balls for a game of Bagatel, and then you would 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:05.480 bring the balls back afterward, like you would write down 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.440 your score, maybe bring the bartender over to see your score, 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:12.320 and then try and get some beer out of it 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:16.600 or whatever. But this was an activity that would benefit 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.840 from automation. We talk a lot about automation on this 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:22.240 show and how it can be bad, but sometimes it's good, 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:24.520 you know, if you don't want to have to keep 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:28.120 track of a bunch of marbles while your clientele are 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:32.640 playing Bagatel. Then this is a good development, which is 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:37.960 that the introduction of the coin operated slot game. I 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:40.640 did an episode about the history of vending machines which 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:44.120 stretches back surprisingly far. There are records of an ancient 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.800 design by Hero of Alexandria back in the first century 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:50.720 of the Common era. For example, a hero proposed a 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:53.680 device that, in exchange for a deposited coin, would dispense 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:59.600 holy water. Some pretty clever system of a pan and levers, 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:03.160 and so when you inserted a coin, that coin would 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:06.280 fall onto a pan and weigh it down, and this 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:08.959 would put pressure on a lever. The lever would open 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:12.200 a valve and let the holy water out, but then 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:14.960 the pan would eventually tip over far enough for the 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:18.319 coin to slide off of it into a repository, and 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:20.920 when freed of the coin's weight, the pan would come 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:23.920 back up again and the lever would close the valve 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:26.120 and the water would stop flowing, which is pretty neat. 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:28.959 We don't know if anyone ever built one of those things, 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:32.640 but the design seems like it would work. But the 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:36.320 real era of the coin operated vending machines would be 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:40.000 the nineteenth century. The eighteen hundreds, folks began to build 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:43.400 machines that would dispense stuff ranging from books to stamps 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.680 to later on stuff like postcards and food. Finding a 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:48.960 way to connect the insertion of a coin with the 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:51.719 operation of the device was the real trick, but by 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.480 the late nineteenth century it was really becoming a thing. 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:56.800 One company in the United States that was in the 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:00.800 coin operated machine business was a Detroit Bay Least operation 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:07.920 called Kale Brothers Manufacturing Company. That cillle So Kale became 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:12.439 known as an amusements manufacturing company, building coin operated devices 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:17.560 like test your Strength games, gum vending machines, slot machines, 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:22.480 and yes, coin operated Bagatel tables. So again, early on 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.120 we see an association of proto pinball machines and less 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:30.680 respectable means of amusing oneself. So the Kale brothers themselves, 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.960 August and Adolph, they formed the company in the early 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:39.760 nineteen hundreds, though August had previously operated his own company, 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:42.280 and some of his work kind of bleeds over between 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:46.920 these two organizations, including this Bagatel game. I'm sure they 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:50.800 made many more models than just one. The one I 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:55.160 could find was called log Cabin, which itself went through 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:59.200 several iterations. The first version of log Cabin was kind 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:01.600 of boxy. It looks sort of like a picture frame, 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.480 like it was a rectangle. Later versions, however, would have 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:07.400 an arched upper border, so you'd have a curve at 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:10.640 the top instead of you know, hard angles, and that 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:12.760 curve was a nice curve that a ball could follow 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.720 if you were to plunge it up the playfield. Now, 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:18.000 the game was kind of like plinko. You know, you 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:20.360 would launch a ball to the top of the table 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:23.800 and again the ball. The table was an incline so 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:26.840 that the ball would roll toward the bottom of the playfield, 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.080 and there were pins all along the way, which would 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:34.160 you know, change the way the ball would fall. Eventually, 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:36.960 a ball would nestle into a slot at the base 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:38.880 of the board, and there was also a hole at 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:40.920 the very top of the board. If you got a 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.040 ball in the hole, you would win yourself a dollar. 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.720 The bottom pockets had values ranging from absolutely nothing up 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:51.680 to fifty cents, and it cost five cents to play 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.360 the game. You would get one shot per play. But 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:56.560 we still don't have any flippers. We don't have any 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:59.960 electro mechanical components to talk about. Heck, with log Cabin, 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:03.120 it was a lot about luck, so we're definitely close 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.040 to gambling here. What's more, this is how things would 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:09.120 stay for around three decades. It wouldn't be until the 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:13.360 nineteen thirties when we'd actually get the word pinball at all. Like, 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:16.880 you could argue that log Cabin was a pinball machine 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:21.680 even though there was no like flippers or other mechanical elements. Besides, 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:26.200 you know, the plunger and flippers would take like half 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:29.000 a century to get there. So in the nineteen thirties 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.520 we're skipping way ahead. Because while there were lots of 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.960 other tables made over the following decades, they weren't different 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:40.000 enough to really merit inclusion. So by the nineteen thirties 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.000 you get to a company called the Bingo Novelty Company, 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:48.280 which produced a purely mechanical proto pinball machine called, fittingly enough, Bingo. 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:51.200 The game had a coin slot, it had a plunger, 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.040 It had no other mechanical components, at least none that 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:56.040 I could see, And if you put a coin in 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:58.600 the slot, it would give you the chance to shoot 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:02.400 five balls up the playfield. And these balls could settle 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:05.960 into one of five holes surrounded by pins, so you 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:07.639 had to have the ball land just right to go 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:10.440 into these holes. Otherwise they'd bounce off and rolled down 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:12.359 to drain at the base of the playfield and you 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.560 would lose them. The promotional material for Bingo proclaimed it 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:17.919 to be a game of skill. I suppose if you 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.280 were very, very good with the plunger, you could make 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:22.520 the argument that it was a game of skill, and 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:24.679 maybe you could shoot the ball so it landed in 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:28.320 the appropriate holes. I assume those holes were associated with 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:31.080 the letters of Bingo, and that the main goal was 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:34.120 to get one in each hole. That's just a guess. 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:36.960 The pictures I've seen have all been at an angle 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:40.000 where I really couldn't see the playfield very clearly, so 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:44.520 it's hard to say exactly what the goal was. But 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:48.760 it was a game that was rather popular that One 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:52.119 interesting thing about Bingo is that the Bingo novelty Company 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:55.600 would partner with a young manufacturer to produce the machine 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:59.159 because demand was higher than what the novelty company could supply. 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:04.879 Was a company called Gottlieb, which would become famously connected 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.639 to pinball machines moving forward. It would become one of 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:12.399 the big names in pinball production. Another early game was 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:16.280 called bally Who. This one also involved using a plunger 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:18.320 to shoot a ball up a playfield, where it could 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:20.840 roll down and hopefully land in one of the holes 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.720 guarded by pins to earn a high score. Again, some 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.080 proprietors would award prizes to those who achieved a high 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:30.680 score you know that was above a certain given level 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:34.040 in the game. One neat component in bally Who is 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:37.960 that upon receiving a coin, the floor of the playfield 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:42.400 would kind of drop out, and that would allow the 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:46.560 balls that were already nestled into these little holes to 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:50.159 drop through and thus roll down and be ready for 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:52.960 your next round of play. So I thought that was cool, 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:55.959 Like it was a way of clearing the playfield without 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:59.560 having it be open access. Right, the earliest Bagatel games 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.560 were into the air. You could reach in and move 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:05.080 the balls around if you only wanted to, and then 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:09.040 obviously that would lead to the potential for lots of 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:11.720 hanky panky, Like you could just say you got a 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:13.960 high score and all you did was put the balls there, 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:16.840 kind of like in Young Frankenstein with the dart playing scene. 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.919 So that was something that had to be addressed. So 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:22.280 you would typically have like a sheet of glass, a 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:25.880 pane of glass separating the player from the playfield, and 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:28.080 maybe in one little section you would be able to 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.440 retrieve the balls, but otherwise you were not able to 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:34.200 physically manipulate where the balls were got to make the 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:37.480 cheating a little difficult at least. So there's a short 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:41.600 video of bally Who in action. It's on YouTube if 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:43.960 you want to watch it. It's on a channel called 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:48.760 Balin von Stahl b A L E n v A 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:52.879 N S t a L. And the game again is 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:56.040 called bally Who, so you can actually see it played 0:19:56.320 --> 0:20:00.639 and it's pretty simple, but it certainly is protopinball anyway. 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:02.399 A ton of other similar games would come out in 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.320 the nineteen thirties, providing entertainment to cash strapped folks who 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:09.440 were navigating the Great Depression. You might say, like, wow, 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:12.800 these things seem really simple, but you have to remember 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:17.280 at the time the number of outlets accessible to most 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:21.040 folks was pretty limited as far as entertainment goes, and 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:25.919 money was in tight supply for a lot of families. 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:30.240 So finding something that was relatively inexpensive and diverting was 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:34.280 a big deal. Around nineteen thirty three, some designers began 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:38.320 to incorporate electric batteries into these machines, and these would 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:42.880 usually power pretty simple elements, a lot of noisemaker elements 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.679 like buzzers and bells, that kind of thing which would 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:50.320 signal scoring and draw attention to the table, but other 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:53.720 than that, they weren't really powering any components that would 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:58.240 materially affect the play. This was also around the time 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:01.000 that the term pinball began to pop up and be 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:05.119 used to describe these machines. Gottlieb produced a table in 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:11.280 nineteen thirty four called Register, which featured a progressive score counter. Finally, 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:13.760 players would not have to keep track of their own 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:17.440 scores and just add everything up in their heads. So 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:21.320 the score was displayed as a kind of dial, and 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:23.800 there was a needle that would keep track of the score. 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:27.560 The needle will just physically point to whatever score value 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:32.240 the player had achieved at that point. Now, one problem 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:35.760 that proprietors were running into was that some people were 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:38.280 willing to break the rules in order to try and 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.320 get a high score. They would bump or nudge a table, 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:43.960 or they would outright pick the table up and tilt 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:47.960 it to try and guide balls into the higher scoring sections. 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:52.040 And considering some places were paying out for high scores, 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:54.600 I guess you could understand why this was happening, but 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:57.000 it was a problem. So how do you make sure 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:00.679 people aren't cheating in order to win a prize or 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:05.320 even just to set a high score. Enter the tilt sensor. Now, 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:10.000 some sources cite Harry Williams as the inventor of the tilt. 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:13.560 His name is also associated with pinball because the Williams 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:17.600 manufacturing company would end up making a lot of pinball machines, 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:20.560 and in fact you hear things like Bally and Williams 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:25.000 and Bally Williams and that sort of stuff. But at 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:29.560 least some pinball historians say that a game that came 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:31.919 out of a company called Rockola may have been the 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:34.879 first to have a tilt sensor. Others say it was 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:40.119 Gottlieb's Broker's Tip game that had it, But all of 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:43.679 them had very similar approaches to being able to detect 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:48.520 a tilt, So the way the sensor worked was really genius. 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:51.720 It was a very simple mechanical approach. Typically, you would 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:54.879 have a cup and inside the cup, you would mount 0:22:55.080 --> 0:22:59.000 a little pedestal, and this would be level to the floor. 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:02.960 The pedestal would have maybe a little kind of shallow 0:23:03.119 --> 0:23:06.400 bowl at the very top of it, a very very 0:23:06.440 --> 0:23:09.800 shallow bowl into which you would place a ball, and 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:14.959 if someone were to rock the machine, the ball would 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:17.959 get knocked off of this pedestal, and that would indicate 0:23:18.000 --> 0:23:20.560 that there was a tilt. Some of the games, the 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:24.119 Rocola game in particular, had very very clever ways of 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:27.560 doing this. With a Rocola game, the ball was actually 0:23:27.560 --> 0:23:32.880 being held against a little tab that connected to a 0:23:32.920 --> 0:23:37.159 sign that indicated the game was legit, and underneath the 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:41.080 ball was a plunger, a spring mounted plunger that was 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:45.080 keeping pressure on the ball, keeping it in place against 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:49.520 this little plate that held the legit sign in place. 0:23:49.560 --> 0:23:52.280