A highlight of Pinball Expo '88 was the tour of the Williams Electronics pinball machine factory. We watched metal parts fabrication, playfield construction, component wiring, cabinet assembly, final testing, and crating for shipment. The two dozen photos that accompany this story show how raw materials were transformed into Williams Taxi pinball machines.
Jason Higgins creates satirical graphic arts that combine verbal and visual puns to make you think twice. He offered some artworks for only 50 cents each in an LYPC capsule vending machine.
Pinball machine collector David Silverman brought nine of his games to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC on Halloween Day 2009 to promote his planned National Pinball Museum. Smithsonian visitors could play Silverman's games before and after his 90-minute lecture about pinball history and art.
| Tags: 9 Sisters, A-Go-Go, Art, Baffle Ball, Bagatelle, Ballyhoo, Capt. Fantastic, Criss Cross A-Lite, El Dorado, Fireball, Indiana Jones, Knock Out, Log Cabin, Metro, National Pinball Museum, North Star, Nugent, Op-Pop-Pop, Parlor Bagatelle, Pinball, Punball: Only One Earth, Red & Ted's Road Show, Saratoga, Skyway, Slick Chick, Spitfire, Square Head, The Champ, Whiffle, Whoopee Game, Wizard!, Wonderland
My family's 1966 summer vacation began in Norway, where we saw an unusual game among many more noteworthy sights. A snapshot reminded me of the game, but I could not discover any more about it for 40 years.
Thanks to the Internet, to Google's instant language translation, and especially to web sites in Norway and Finland, I finally learned that the game is called Kronespill in Norway—roughly Flick-a-Coin. I learned how it worked and I played a Flash simulation of its Finnish counterpart called Pajatso or Payazzo.
Sara Selepouchin designs offbeat diagrams of everyday machines, which she silkscreens onto handy household items. I could not resist buying her pinball machine diagram featuring Williams' Monster Bash.
| Tags: Art, Crafty Bastards, Girls Can Tell, Monster Bash, Pinball, Pinball Parlour
My friends and I operated the Dickson Nickelodeon, a pinball arcade/coffee shop in the basement of a dormitory at Cornell University. We had acquired 23 (very) used coin-operated machines: pinball machines, arcade games, vending machines, and a penny scale.
During the 16 weeks of the fall 1974 semester, I recorded the cash box receipts for each of the 17 working machines. I don't know why I retained those records; I wish I had kept all the machines instead.
Can you guess which games were the most popular?
A crowd was gathered around the Lobster Zone game in the waiting area of Dirty Dick's Crab House, where we stopped for lunch last month while vacationing in Panama City Beach, Florida. They watched their friend try to win a live lobster in a specialized claw machine.
How often do people win lobsters? "Someone won a lobster yesterday," the restaurant host assured me.
Automatic Industries of Youngstown, Ohio manufactured the first coin operated pinball game, Whiffle, in 1931. Soon they offered a bewildering array of games with the Whiffle name, including this game, which was converted (or built) to operate without coins.