You're listening to Topcast, this old pinballs online radio. For more information visit them anytime, www.marvin3m.com. Flash Topcast. Today we're going to be talking to somebody that's been involved in the pinball industry since the 1930s clear up to the end of the 1990s. He was working at Gengkol starting at 1937. He also worked for a short time in 1959 at Bali and then went over to Williams in 1960 and stayed with Williams until they stopped producing pinball machines in 1999. This gentleman spans over 60 years in the pinball business. He has quite a few stories to tell. Special guest. Special guest. Special guest. Special guest. So I'd like to introduce Steve Cordack. Steve Cordack has been in the pinball industry since 1937 to 1999. Also Steve was unavailable to do this interview over the phone so we've got to take Topcast on the road and we went to Steve's house in Chicago to interview him. And now we're going to talk to Steve Cordack. When did you start working at Gengkol? 1937. Okay. And how old were you? If you don't mind. You don't have to answer that if you don't mind. Let me figure it out. I got to take good use. Let me get a chance. 11, 21, 31. That was 26 years old. Okay. And before that, I mean how did you get the job? I mean what did you do to get that job? I mean is it something that you want it to be in or you just have to fall into it or what gets that something we can talk about on this here? Is that okay? Sure. Yeah. I'm really interested in how you got. You're 26, 27 in your interview at Gengkol? Or it doesn't work that way. It was not that way. No. Let me tell you what happened. I was a depression kid. See when I graduated from high school in 1930 and went to college, I started getting back on an electrical circuitry and so forth. After a year I had to quit. I had to quit because I had to go to work. I had to go to work to provide food for my mother and father and our family. At that time we had nine children, nine children and my mother and father. And my father was working only one day, sometimes two days a week. My mother was working a couple of days a week in the Bell Telephone Company washing floors and cleaning floors and everything else to make a couple of dollars. And I had my brothers and I had to go out and try to earn a few bucks. Now there was a time, there was a time in high school in 1928 when I worked for Zenith. And at that time I was making $22 a week. Was that good pay for the time? Terrific. I was only got $20. But if I worked every day they gave me an extra $2 to an $1.00 and got $22. Then came the depression. When the depression came I worked many places for as much as ten cents an hour, worked ten hours and got one dollar. I learned then. Everybody always asked me what is the thing that affected your entire life? The thing that affected my background and life and entire life was the depression because I learned what it meant to have a dollar. So what happened? They offered me a job in a forest service and I said okay I'll take it for a year and see what happens. I did. They put me in a ranger station. I took care of twenty some lookout towers that handle fires all over the bitterwood range in Idaho. And it came close to the end and I said I can't stay. I cannot afford. They went off of me the job again. You got to answer by May 1st because that's when we have to have an essay with you're coming or not. I came in a winter time back to Chicago. I'm looking every day at good church every day praying. I could find a job. I'm looking for a job so I can stay in Chicago my family, my brothers, my sisters, my mother and father. I wasn't going to go to Idaho because if I go to Idaho they'll never see me again. Who else is going to come and see me over there? And this is the story that everybody in this three knows but you don't know. No. I was walking one day down Ashland Avenue and it was raining like oh hell I didn't even own an umbrella. I opened up a door to a vestibule, closed the door to get in on the rain. Woman opens the door she says are you looking for a job? Yes I'm looking for a job. Can you sat her? Yes I can sat her. They put me on the line and that's what I got introduced to pinball games. So that was the Ganko factory right there? Ganko factory building pin game games on Ashland Avenue. So you just literally stroke a lot. Bad Carl Weathers and rain and in a street and you walked into it. Two and a half weeks before May 15th of April. That's how I did it. And what year was it? You said 37? 1937. So you were good at salary? I always had to learn it. I was really fast. Also you didn't really know how to solder? I had been having some electrical background. I had no trouble at all. It got so good. So what was your first job there at Ganko? Well see they put me on a line soldering but I was soldering very close to where the testers were testing the game. And it wasn't long that I recognized the game was real well because I had a background of circuitry. You know? And there was simple circuitry that these games were on and I went to playing a couple games how I could tell exactly. I was so close to the testers that every so often when they'd have a problem I put my head up. I said I know the problems. Can I show you? I showed them. They were surprised that I was working there as a solder. And here I was showing them what I was wrong with the games and I was able to correct them and fix them up. It wasn't long that engineering saw that. And they said this guy doesn't belong on the line. He doesn't belong. He's good enough. We need an electrical man. We need an electrical man in the department of engineering. That's where I started being learning about pin games. That's where I got to introduce with the most important guy in the world. Harvey Heiss who was the guy learning of that who taught me everything there was in pin games and at the same time I started an electrical then I had to add a help with all the pin games and I had one hell of a time. Now what was when you were doing the soldering? What were they paying you then for a 40 cents an hour? 40 cents an hour? Which actually wasn't bad back then. That was good. Well we really got it job. And then when you went into the engineering department did they give you a raise? Oh yeah. So you were doing okay. Yeah. And what did your family think about this job? They didn't care what that was. I did as long as I was working because somebody, every check I made I give turn to my mother so that she could buy food and stop for the family. I wish one of those things that I would get a check and even a week and grow a blow it. I give my money to, I give my check sign my check and give it to my mother to buy food and everything. And she'd give me a dollar, dollar and a half or something for driving a walkie just to, because I didn't have a car walking to the place for a place and spending a little bit of money on myself. And if I needed to choose or something she'd give me money so I could buy a pair of shoes for a buck and a half or something like that. So from 37 to the summer 6th, 1941, what, I mean were you in the engineering department basically other than your stint with soldering you were in the engineering department right? I was in the engineering department in Genko up to 1957, 1958. But when December 7th came and Japanese, you know, Bomproll Harbor, how much of that change everything at Genko? We had the greatest soldering group of people in the world that could solder real well and we started making walkie-talkies for the Marines and they used to able to solder in a three quarter in socket, 15, 20 positions to solder and still put the sleeves on there and never short out. That's how good the people were. That's so good that I used to train people how to solder, you know. And I used to take people off the street, women that used to come from along that had kids working in school and everything would come work between times and I would suggest teaching them that's how good. So now the war broke out. So the government says, we want you to take charge of all the soldering, we want you to take care of all the training of the people, all the jobs that we're going to get. So now they put me in charge of 800 people in our place. How many were working prior to the war? I had one. I had a lot to 600, 700. Really? Yeah. So this was a pretty sizable plan. Well we had quite a plan. Quite a plan. Now did you do any game design before the war? Oh sure. Sure. And what was your first game? Well the first game. The first game that I designed perfectly. Right. The first game that I had complete design of is 1947 and 1948. Okay so it was after the war then. So before the war Harvey was doing all the game design and I was helping him and I never had a complete charge but I had complete control of all the electrical work, all the electrical layout. I did all the electrical layouts of all the games. Did you have to draw the schematics too? Yes we had a lot of schematics. I still have some of them here. And you had to do all those drawings by hand? Yep. And that was you if that was doing that. Now tell me about Harvey. Harvey Heiss was with Gengko starting way back in 1931-32 and he was with them from the beginning and he worked only part time because he had a regular job. But then when they started to get into making pin games, real good pin games for the bars and so forth, they hired him completely, took him away from his job and that's where he started working. He started building nothing but pin games. That's why when I came in there in 1937 he was so glad to get somebody that was an dummy. You know how I was. I was so much about. I was really able to do that and at the same time he was training me and joining me what how he built games and what he liked about the games. What was the purpose of building games with certain features and why and everything. I had to learn all of that from him. Now what about the Gengsburg brothers? Did you know them? Oh Lou Dave and Meyer yes. Three of them. And were they nice guys? Oh everyone of them was terrific. And were they real smart guys or was they doing any game design or were they strictly management? They had big management, nothing else. Nothing else. But they were very very very smart. They were the smartest Jewish guys in the world. What they did is they gave us, what they gave us is anewity policies. What would happen is whatever you were getting paid there was a certain fee of a deal that they would give you on an anewity Ryan Policky. They'd say well now this Ryan Policky is worth so much. And we're going to put in so much and so much. Now you put in so much and so much we will duplicate that. Matching. Matching right. And the new Ryan Policky was had big value a lot of higher values. And every time we got an increase another new Ryan Policky. Every time we got an increase another new Ryan Policky. And these policies would be worth only good money if you stayed with it for 10 years. So you did leave the place. Who the hell want to leave the place when you got these goddamn policies? 10 years. 10 years. Every time they get one, 10 years. Another one, 10 years. Another one, 10 years. So now you got these things. You can't believe how much money there was held into those new policies when we all decided when we all left. So basically they were they had almost a four savings program with a matching percentage. It's actually pretty cool. Pretty good idea. No other company had it. Interesting. Interesting. So during the war you're making walkie talkies. So all the pin game stuff is basically on hold, right? No way it could open games because we couldn't get material. We couldn't get silver contacts. We couldn't get the material for the blades. But they let you keep building it until you're out of the material that you had in stock. But there's no way that you could buy it to forget any addition of material. And when did the inventory run out of that? So about after one or two games, two games. So by early 42 you're basically full war making walkie talkies. Now when did the walkie talkies thing stop? Because that stop as soon as we got other jobs, we did a lot of other jobs besides that. Oh there's so many jobs that I can't even begin to tell you. You mean during the war? Yeah. Okay. So then after the summer of 45, the war is over. And after August of 45, when did production of pin games where you could get materials in inventory? 46. It was 46. So it took a good six months before you could start making games again. Well we were already making games in 45, we were selling them to a 46. I mean you had them all designed ready to go. And then you just had to wait until you could get the materials. So was that a rough time between like the summer of 45 and the start of 46 that kind of laps? And it wasn't because we were starting hiring people, more people for it. Because we were losing people that would slowly and then we started hiring more people and people that could be trained to assemble equipment that was very important that was different than city of soldering. Okay. Now in 46, what was the first game after the war that really started to sell good for Gengkull. Total roll. Okay. Roll down game. Yeah. The roll down game thing, Gengkull was really big on roll down games. Yeah. I mean what's the history behind that? I mean they had seemed like they made more roll down games than anybody else. I mean maybe United had a couple and nobody could, nobody could duplicate them. Why? Why? Because we were the only company in the entire industry that had worked everything on the coils were all DC. We're not AC. Everything was DC. With first of all with rectifiers. Yeah, the money and market fires. Yeah, right. They were before Son, they were the other one. The Selenium rectifiers didn't come in until after the war. Okay. That's when we were able to make them, really make it. And since I was in charge of electrical work, I was able to do tricks with the coils that nobody in the industry could do nowhere. Well, what was the big advantage at the time of the DC powered coils versus the AC? Well, first of all, we didn't have to have a motor to run all the equipment. I could run it just by the coils with relays operating to do the work that we wanted. How could I control it? No trouble. We learned how to put copper washers on either on a front end or on the back side of the relays. One place to hold it and the other place to delay it going in. So I had all kinds of effects on coils that I could have in the industry. We could do that. We were the only ones all the way to the end that had rectifier that had DC in that game. Yeah, it wasn't until the Selenies when the Williams and Bally started doing just selective coils DC. Now, why was none of the other companies because they couldn't afford to change? They couldn't afford to change because it would change all the coils, all the relays, all the step-up units, everything would have to be changed. All the coil stops. Yeah, the mechanics. I also noticed that chemical games ran at lower voltage, too. No, Godly was running at 25 volts for the Selenoy and Williams was largely at 50 and you guys were about at 20 volts. Yeah, we were around at 20 and 15 volts. Right. And that's because you just the advantage of the DC allowed you to do that. You were able to do tricks with them that nobody else could do with even DACs. Okay. Okay, so now I got to print out from the internet pinball database of all the games that they say you designed. And they say that the first one all you did was in the fall of 47 and that was the Bronco. No, that was triple action. Okay. I'm sorry, hold it, hold it, hold it. Bronco, will I say that again? They say that Bronco came out before triple action. Well, I had nothing to do with it. That wasn't your game. Yeah, I had a lot to do with it, but you see, let me tell you something. In 9th October of 1947, Godly came out with Humpty Dumpty. Right. Six flippers. Two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two. Comes December. No, comes December. Next week of December, Harvey Heiss is hospitalized, cannot design a game. And they came to me and said, you've got to design a game. And our show is the last week in January. That's only four, five, seven weeks away. We have to, you have to design a game for us for the show. And that's when you did triple action. So then I started working on a game. And everybody else asked to me, why didn't you put the flippers in, where God made put them? They had two here, two here, two here. And it was selling like all hell, no trouble at all. It was making tremendous money. I said, well, when I started building the designing my game, I said, I couldn't afford to put in four or five or six flippers on a game. I was taught by Harvey Heiss to be as conservative as I could be. I said, I only put, I'm going to put only two flippers at the bottom. And I put them at the bottom of the game where they have been ever since. During this time, I know you weren't working at Williams, but Williams started using impulse flippers, you know, where you press, it didn't matter if you press the right side or the left side, right? You press either one. Both flippers flip, but they just go up and come now, up and now real quick. You know, you just press them and they just impulse up. Where God lead, and just without everybody else, you could hold the flipper buttons in and you could keep, you know, there was an end stroke switch on the coil and you could hold the flipper, you could hold the flipper up. That's what we did. We did too. Right. Yeah, everybody but Williams did that. Any idea why they would have done that? I don't know. I'm just curious if you knew those more fun, I trapped in a glove with a single flipper. That's where I thought too, but they made it, you know, so that you basically couldn't do that. And I know that was before, you were long before you were at Williams, but I thought maybe you had some insight to why Williams used these impulse flippers. No, that wasn't when Harry Williams was there because I started in 1960. Right. And then that was when Harry was going out, you were coming in, right? Yeah, right. And then we came to the game design. That was where, that's where, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Harry Mab was there. Uh, he's the one that designed the flippers for Gottlieb. Right. And he was, he was old. He was already 70 some years old and what just he didn't, he didn't, was losing it. And they wanted another one to replace him. So they stuck me in her and they gave me a green goods salary and I says, OK, I'll take it. I know that in order to get in her. So that's how I got involved with the Sam Stern. Now during the 50s with Genco, was there any particular game that was really memorable? Be it pinball or arcade because you also helped work on Genco had some unbelievable arcade games during that period too. Their gun games, more ram-a, um, two player basketball, um, champion baseball. Just a high-five baseball. At this point, Steve has a three-ring binder with pictures and information on all the games he designed for Genco throughout the 1950s and I kind of go through it. Space car is gun game. That's all pin games after that. There it is. What's his map? It's his partial. Uh, uh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, no, no. The reason I see partial is because that's the one that was started by Harry Mab's before he left. Oh, OK. And he had trouble getting complete. Uh, when he left, and since he started it, I kind of like to always put it on there and say something that, at least, at least he had something to do with it. Right, right. OK. Now, Genco quarterback, I've been trying to find that game forever. Do you like to see what it looks like? Why do you have one? You have a Genco quarterback? You're giving me that look. I don't know what that means. I'm glad to keep taking pictures first of all. So you can now, the Golden Nugget and the Silver Chest. Those were rolled out, right? Right. OK. Sky Gunner, that was a gun game. Really cool looking gun game. Yeah. Um, I don't think I've ever seen Night Fighter and Vader I've seen. Um, shuffle pool. What was shuffle pool? That one I'm not familiar with. Reflected. See, you see these like, pull to pull, pause here? You shot. And whatever you knocked out, they reflected on here from the top. So the pull balls were not were underneath this deck and the player didn't see them. And then through reflective light, they reflected down on this almost like a mirror type surface. That's correct. Right. So this is like pinball 2000 in 1953. That's right. Right. Look at that. Now, did you design the entire? I had something to do with this with myself with Harvey Heiss. Huh. Now, that's, I'm already seeing this game, the shuffle pool. That's really cool. There's a lot of other games you didn't see. Well, so we got Genko Golden nugget rolled down, silver chest rolled down. Just to clarify, a roll down game is a sort of slanted long play field that uses like three inch balls. And you basically roll the ball down this long play field. And at the end of the play field, there's holes that you're trying to actually aim for. And it's largely a gambling game. If you want some more information on them, you can hear about the roll down games that rob burqons that were made by Genko in the 1950s in our Rob Burke interview. Skygun Knight Fighter. Invader. Those are all gun games. Shufflepool, we just looked at. Matchpool was probably similar, right? Two player basketball, rifle gallery. Big top rifle gallery. Wild West. 1955. Skyrocket rifle gallery in 1955. European two player basketball. Quarterback, both 1955. Tournament pool, deluxe tournament pool, super big top rifle gallery in score pool in December 55. So you did most of this stuff. It was 53 to 55. That's right. Here. Oh, keeps going. Sorry. Ha, should have known. Should have known. The list did not end there. Yeah. Okay. So then 56, you're in deluxe tournament pool. I'll talk about that just a second. I mean, that king size tournament pool, super deluxe pool, baseball pool, grandma fortune teller. So the pedestal grandma fortune teller in high fly baseball in 56. You did both of those, right? And then marks, marks, marks light, which was a magnesium top pool game. Big fair rifle, David Krakat. That's a cool gun game. Official skill ball, official skill ball, two player and six player, circus rifle gallery, rotation pool, gypsy grandma, which was the horoscope gypsy grandma, the one in the more squared off retail cabinet. Another David Krakat junior model, super 21. Oh, there it is. I guess I'm not sure if something. No, wait, here's a picture of probably the most famous arcade game ever made. I mean, really, the Genco 2 player basketball. Probably the most fun too. I have one of these. This game is unbelievably cool. What I mean, not only because it's head to head, but it blew away the Chicago coin version. Because basically the Chicago coin version, the guys, you couldn't turn them. The machine turned the guys and the only thing you could, you could vary was timing and how hard you pulled the shot on this one. You can aim them right and left. You can shoot for the opposing players baskets in the top upper level baskets and the lower level that have variable points scoring. This game was genius and was we know that this is this is your baby. We built work done it. Harvey and you. Yeah. Okay. Who can't just remember there was a time period of time here when Harvey Heiss was gone. And now we had either talked about it or did it tie it together and then we finished it up with it. Now look at this. This one right here. What is it? I don't know. You're going to tell me, the orange. I'm not sure what that is. Looks like a roll down style cabinet. But that's flying aces. Now who owns that game? Somebody owned it and sent that to me. Wow. I've never even seen that game. Now look at there it is. Space age. Oh that one there. This is another incredibly cool game. I had this. I had everything to do with everything. Space age? It's the one game I've never been able to find. It's not a space age. It's motor animes and space age. Space age is this one you see? Right. And then I have here. This one right here. This is the one that I enjoy. I enjoy more than anything else. Right here. What the motor rammer? Here it is. Oh yeah. Motor rammer? Classic game. Yeah. Boy is that a great day. I didn't look at Genka all the way across. Okay. What else do you want to know? Okay. Let's back up and talk about the two player basketball. Okay. You have any good story. You want to hear it? Let's sit down. We don't need to be standing up for this right? Yeah. One of these games and one of these I gave him is my brother-in-law. He still has it. He's got a baseball pool. That's one I've never seen. Neither did this Robert Burke. Robert Burke's never seen this one either. Yeah. When he saw this he almost passed out. He said, where's this game? I said, it's something to Chris Delic and Chicago. That is really cool. That's incredible. I mean, you made this game and you gave it to your brother? Yeah. No, we made about a half a dozen of these games and I figured what else to use is just giving it a selling it. I can give this to put it packed it up and I gave it to my brother-in-law. And did you mean you only made six in total? That about it does. No, I don't know how many we made. We didn't make too many of them. Let's say we made a hundred of them. Okay. Oh my God. I don't even see that flyer. Did you see that from when you were there? I found this along my junk file. Wait, hold on. We made the game but Chicago read it on the bottom. We gave it to his brother. Yeah, it says it. Yeah, it says it. Again, called massage-a-matic. Again, called product manufactured by Chicago Dynamics, which is of course Chicago coin. Right. Now this was a coin-operated massage thing. I mean, what is this exactly? I don't know what the hell it was. One of our designers made that and then it was turned over. Now what about... This is another kind of interesting one, jumping jack. Oh yeah, we made that. We made it out of a bottle. It was just like a slot machine. It was like a gambling game. Okay. Huh. And then the shuffle pool. We talked about that. The Genko 2 player basketball. I really want to talk about the Genko 2 player. Genko's new moving style swinging player. What's this all about? Somebody on the East Coast said, you guys are bragging about swinging everything else. Now we'll show you what it looks like, have something like this. So who's brain child was this? Somebody on the East Coast. And Jim Jersey. Okay. And then we've got the Wild West Gallery. You better look at this because they may not have this thing in another month. And here is the quarterback. Yep. That's the one you were talking about. Yeah. And this game, incredibly hard to find. And then the horse go pedestal grandma. I just want you to know there are a lot of those games that are hard to find. The Mortar Ram, of course. Showboat. Gun club, gun game. Not to be confused with the Williams gun club. Pinball. Fun fare. Which we just, I just bought a fun fare. Yeah. That's kind of a cool game. Yeah. Space age though. That is something. That is awesome. That is something. That is something. And it's built in the Mortar Ramacamp cabinet. But I mean, this was your baby, Space Age. Yeah. Right. Now, why the Mortar Ramacamp cabinet compared to using, you know, whatever a different design? Well, because we had to do, I had an automobile here. I had to do something to be able to ride around and do something on there. See? So I had to use something here. The same thing I did that with, when I did that to the other one, what's the other one that I made? A Mortar Ramacamp cabinet. Jet pilot. I see the Space Age had a puck in here, seeing. Right. And you push the puck into all these different places. And then it spits it back out. Yeah. And you got to take it to the next location. Right. The next location. And what there was one, two, there was five. Yeah. Five spots in your head. I was living in a amount of time to do this. And in the location you had to do it. You couldn't do it. Right. In order. Right. Right. I've heard that this, I've only known one of these. I've only ever seen one. You know, that I don't know who owns it now, but Larry Beis I had one of these. Is that right? Yeah. And it was just, he sent me pictures and I was just like, aw. And I guess there's another one in Europe too, that I've seen pictures of. But those are the only two I've ever seen. Now, Mortar Ramacamp, you see a lot more of. But the Space Age, now, did you do have anything to do with Jet Pilot? Jet Pilot was also in this style, in the Mortar Ramacampan, but it was a jet fighter that went around in circles and landed on the cities. Right. Or was that Harvey's? I don't know. I can't remember because he did a lot of ourselves, you know. Flying aces. Only four units know to exist. Huh. Wow. See, this here, you see this, main name here? Skrewlaw? Right. In 1948. Yeah, that was the, you know. I'm a turn of sound. Then it was played well, made good money, and there's not too many of around anymore, you know. Right. Yeah. Good game. I'm listening. Okay. So, now, two player basketball. Explain what, where did you guys come up with that? Well, two player basketball game. Well, I think it was just one of these crazy things that did, hey, basketball is a popular team theme. Let's do something on basketball, you know. The baseball everybody is making baseball, baseball, baseball, does make a basketball game. So we made a basketball theme and put it together and it cost us a lot of money to make those little characters that were down in the bottom there that could pick up the ball and throw it. Right. And the secret of the whole thing was how to hit that ball to go into the hands of the guy to shoot, you know. Right. That was something that Harvey Heiss was good at. Harvey Heiss developed, but we had a man called Harry Thompson, the H-O-M-P-S-O-N, a German mechanical engineer. Was he terrific? He just figured out how to do the thing and help us put it together. Yeah, because there's a center tube where the balls come out and it alternates right to left, right to left, really ingenious little mechanism. Simple, but ingenious. You know what I mean? But it works. Oh yeah, works good. That's the one at Parkback Pop and then you bingo, you toss it up there to try to hit it. Right. And if you put it in your opponent's basket, your opponent gets the points, which I thought was genius, you know. Because if you make a bat, because you are not only rewarded for a good shot, you are also penalized for a bat shot. That's correct. You had points for the other man. And that's right. Which was, I thought, was just genius. I think that was a really good kick out of that. And that game sold well, right? Yeah, sold very well. Okay. Now, the gun games that you did, I mean, tell me about those. I mean, what? Well, what happened is we got to a position, a situation one time where we thought we could make, when we saw a original layout of some games with ballers pop, you can stuff like that. We figured we could make a gun game with guns and shoot for something that's moving around, you know. And that's where we started. And we started getting our biggest pride for us at rifles. So we got in touch with Remington. And Remington was going to, it was said that they would sell us the, then because we could use not one or two of them, but hundreds of them see. Right. So they said, well, we'll sell you rejects. And the me, we don't even know if they were rejects, but because we got, we paid only $14 for the rifle. That's all. $14 for a finished rifle that was welded so that you couldn't put the shells into it. You mean so the bolt couldn't lift up? That's bolt was welded closed. Right. Right. Right. And did it have the trigger mechanism and everything? Well, we put the trigger mechanism with the switch. You guys did that. Okay. So you're doing these gun games and get coated a bunch of the classic ones. Oh, we started them making. We were making one game after the other. So it was unbelievable how the number of games that we built. We had a real good run of games. Right. Where, where, where, where other companies were making baseball games and baseball games and stuff like that. We decided to stay with the guns because kids loved the shoes. Oh, yeah. And then the best thing was the characters that we had in shooting and got to a point where one time we even pattened and I had the pattened on that too. We were shooting a rolling ball. You follow? I mean, you're right on a rail or something. Yeah. No. Let's see. The ball would come up. And then when it would let go, you could, you could, it would roll down and you could shoot it there. Then it would crawl about in the other direction and you could shoot it. If you could hit the ball, it was at work right at that position. The ball would drop down. Drop down. And that was something that I had a pat. And I own patten on it. Huh. And then we started making something that was even more exciting in my idea. We made pipes going around. You know, I'm going to, you're not going to have pipes in the pipe would drop down. Five pipes, you know, five pipes going around. If you knocked it it wouldn't down. You knocked it down. When you knocked all of the down, down you got a special scar. Huh. Okay. Now, what, tell me about Mordorama. That was your baby or Harvey's? Well, Harvey has, and I started putting it together. And when he left, I finished it and then I made the follow up to it, you know. Right. The space age. Yeah, right. Now, you used like a 57, I want to say Dodge for the car, you know, in Mordorama. That drove around. I mean, how did you guys come up with, I mean, just like, say, we're going to go down the store and get some toys? No, we could have thought we could have, we could have, we could buy, you know, there were the, all these things were not available, you know. Right. We grabbed it we could get. We grabbed it we could get it was the big enough to be able to put it something in material into it, you know. Right. And then we got to do it on. And it was just, it's interesting how the steering wheel actually moves the front wheels right the left. Right. And then you got control for forward and back. That's right. And you're trying to move basically to the different lighted playfield inserts throughout the game. We need to talk about people today telling what we did. They don't believe it. They can't see. They can't. I like to see that. I like to see that. It's hard to visualize if you've never seen one. That's right. I believe you. Tim Arnold has one and I played it. He has a motor ram. I know. Where were you there? That was maybe three years ago. I see. You know, he's got a motor ram. Now, I don't know if he has it at the pinball hall of fame. That I don't remember. But so, but he's got one, you know, and Burk has one. Burk has a motor ram. Yeah. And he bought that from from Mr. Faze. So okay. So now, what about the baseballs? The high five baseball, the champion baseball, and then the quarterback, which used the champion baseball cabinet, but the guy actually kicks the ball. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about those. Well, you see, how do you feel? Highest was good at something like that. And when he came to mechanical layout, you know, and he was good at coming up with kicking. And boy, he'd worked like a dog and get it working. Get it working. He'd stayed day and night in the place just to get it working, you know. And that took time. You couldn't just say, put it together and have it, you know. If you just want to remember the greatest baseball games were made by Harry Williams during the, for Williams, you know. Right. When when when I joined when I joined when I joined Williams and STEM Stern was, Sam Stern was the in charge. Every, every spring, he had to come up with a new baseball game. We made game, game, game, game, game, spring came, another new baseball game. Spring, spring, spring, another new baseball game. Then they got so good. They started making one for the spring and one for the fall, you know. And baseball games were selling like all hell because it was a popular deal, you know. But to be honest with you, I think the Genco baseballs are way better than the Williams. Yeah, we had one heck of a tie. Well, the unique thing about high fly and champion is that kind of like two-player basketball. You see the same ball. It goes up the tube and then rolls down a little incline and then you actually have a miniaturized wooden back that actually you swing and it's like it comes off the railing and free falls to in front of the bat, like real baseball. Like almost like, you know, it's kind of like a T ball almost type thing, you know. And I just thought it's so ingenious. And that was that you were Harvey that was Harvey. Okay. And so you did that on high fly, which is basically a pinball style cabinet. And then you went to champion and which is sin cabinet is your quarterback. That thing is huge. That thing is a monster. I did all the electrical work on that. That's where the fun came in and waking something like that. Work, you know. Right. The quarterback, the only one I've ever seen is gold that Cleveland Queen had won. I see. And I don't know who bought it. Oh, I know who bought it. Papa bought it. That John Papa guy bought it. And that was about a year ago because Paisak dug it up. And that's the only one I've ever seen. You know, was that one? That's good. Yeah, that's a hard game to come by. Okay. Now what about the horse go grandma? You know, the horse go grandma and the pedestal grandma. Was that your baby too? That was the Harvey and I worked on that together. And my wife made all the dresses for these things. Oh, really? Yeah. She made all the dresses for the grandma. Oh, that's great. She was good at that. You know, she was good at that. You know, no. The hat on the grandma. Was she modeled after anybody? No, not that I know. Okay. I didn't know that maybe, you know, you know, because I imagine you had to have that made, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think I'm not going to have that model or something, but those are among, after post-war, those are the most animated fortune tellers that anybody made. Right. Absolutely. And the cutest too, because they weren't huge. That's correct. It was nice. And it looked good too. Oh, yeah. Really, really good looking. And you had the microphone on the front glass, which was just a wood thing made to look like a microphone, but it was really, it's funny because I have one of the pedestal ones at my house. And it's got that microphone. I see people like trying to talk into it. And I'm like, no, no, it's not really a microphone. You can't hear it yet. But it was well enough implemented to track the thing. Yeah, it did. Track the tension and people actually think it's a real microphone. Like, you should see it. They're trying to talk to the, you know, to the one foot tall lady in the eye of the glass. It's hilarious. So now in 58, Genko bought out by Chicago coin, right? Say that again. In 1958, after a state fair, Genko got bought out by Chicago coin, right? No. Okay, tell me what happened then. What happened is they transferred all of our Genko engineering staff into Chicago coin and we manufactured gun games under our Genko name, right? In Chicago, at Chicago. They had nothing to do with it. We were working separately and getting the same salary that we were getting as we were working for Genko. Well, it got to a point where after a year or so, they just couldn't afford to pay us anymore. And at the same time, they liked our gun game so well that they started building game, gun games, you know, right game. We were good at making gun games, you know, and they grabbed the gun games and they started making this gun games, you know. And so they decided to let us all go. That's when the big change took place. So what, how did this marriage between Chicago coin, because it's like, Genko just kind of 58, 59, Genko just kind of evaporated. Yeah. I mean, why did, I mean, I don't understand. How did that happen? Or why that happened? I mean, so you're basically designing gun games for Chicago coin. No, for Genko. For Genko, but Chicago coins making them, I guess I'm not the only one. And they sure they were making it, they were making it there for us at the place. They had this best step for making it. Okay. Okay. And so then, you know, but after 58, 59, you've seen there's nothing by Genko anymore. So they just basically absorbed you guys and then let you go. Well, see, 58 is one that we weighed our last, when I made my last game. And when I made my last game in July of 58, they let us go. They did let you go. Yeah. So I, within, we had a problem. I had a very, very serious problem. There were four of us, myself, my electrical man, Berrington, my mechanical man, Mary Thompson and Joe and John Murphy, who used to take care of our equipment on the line. You follow me? Right. So they let us go. But now everybody wanted to hire me, the pinball, pinball, you know, everybody wanted to give me a hell of a salary to start. I wouldn't go anywhere. Everywhere I went, I said, if you want me, you're going to take all four of us. You're going to take the whole society. All four of us are in the whole flanting. You'd be surprised that one of the first businessmen who were good at making gun games, the first place I went to was to Seabird. And the reason I went to Seabird is because they were making, they made some real great gun games at one time. But when they made a gun game that they had to burn a thousand of them in their backyard because it wouldn't sell. And it was called Kuhnhant, a Rakhoon going up. Up the poles. Up the pole. They couldn't sell them. And the south, how are you going to sell a Kuhnhant game in the south, you know. So what happened? They didn't break it. So when I went there and I knew they blew it, I introduced myself to them. So I have a staff of guys that know how to make gun games, real good. And we like to hire out to you to make gun games. Well they were very, very serious about it. They were glad. But after a serious consideration on the board of directors, they said they had such a bad reputation. They didn't think they could sell another gun game no matter what happened. They were sorry they couldn't take the scene. Right. And in the Kuhnhant I think was 55 or 56. And it was a rail light game, which means it was basically the guns of big flashlight. And then the Kuhns had little sensors in them. And then it had like a jukebox amplifier. And it actually made sound. You're like when you hit a Kuhn, it squealed. You know. And through this jukebox amplifier. And it was a tube amplifier, which was incredible because they think probably had to warm up when you turned it on. You know. Okay so you go to Seabird and you want your whole design team. You want to bring your whole design team with you. Yeah. I didn't want to even think about making another gun game. So that's a care of it. So that ended that real quick. Well the next person that contacted me was Linda Rant from United. And he wanted me spedly to design games because he was pushing. He was the guy that was doing most of the pushing games and he didn't have time to do it. He wanted somebody to take care. Took me up there to his body and he hasn't done anything. Sorry. And he introduced me to the babes that were there. Because United had designed some gun games. Not as good as your games. I know it. And he wanted to take the hire me. He said he'd hire me but he wouldn't take the other three guys. And he said then he had me in time. Well real offer to me and I said sorry but I feel so responsible for it. I can have no trouble getting a job. These guys will have a hell of a job getting jobs in you. Where are you going to get after all these years that they worked with me at Ganko and Kasey. We're so good. Now how did you end up in Williams? I made a man. So what happened? I didn't know where else to go. So I went over to see my good friend at Valley. I went to his name. My home. My home. No, no, no. What the hell was the charity? See Duran was at United. Of course Harry was at Williams. I don't know the name of the Valley guy. Because during the 50s Valley really wasn't making, they made some arcade games but they really weren't making too many pinball games. They were mostly doing the bingos. Big time into the bingos. You know the first to one ball and the five ball. I think it was just a second. I went over to see this friend of mine. He was running. He's the owner of Valley. I went over to see him. I said I have a problem. I have a problem. What's your problem, Steve? I got three guys with me who, and that's four of us. But when we laid off from Genco and I'm trying to get a job, I have no trouble at all because of my background in the pin games. Everybody wants me. But nobody wants to take these three guys. You know what he said to me? I'll take all four of you. Really? I'll tell you. And you're going to start working on some gun games for it or something. But in the meantime, I said very good. Okay. I've got a job with Bill Donald. That was his name Bill Donald. Sure. Bill Donald. And I hate it when I had it and put me on the job. And I'm like, we are working. Okay. So you were going to battle him in just a second. Now this is the end of 58. Right. The end of 58. So I'm the 58 and I'm there. Just three quarters, almost at the end of 59. Okay. Oh, you're 359. In the meantime, Harry Williams is being brought up by Sam Stern. Sam Stern got this guy, the guy that originally built the four six flippers for Godly working for him. Oh, man. Oh, man. Harry, man. Yeah, man. And he was old already and not been doing it very well. And in these situations, they never approach a guy. That they want. They send somebody. You know, somebody who leaves his to me, hey, Steve, why don't you call up Sam Stern? He's been looking for a designer and he says, and he might be interested. Why don't you call him? I said, no, I don't want to call him. I said, well, listen, he can't call you. You know, that's not the way to do that. Why don't you just call him and talk to him? Okay. I call Sam Stern. He gave me a terrific offer, a terrific offer. And of course, I didn't get the kind of salary I would like to have gotten when I went to Belly and order to get these four guys in, you know. So I said, I don't know, yeah, I haven't got a contract with Belly, but I was hired by Belly here I am. So this was now already the beginning of 1960, 1960. I went over to Bill O'Donnell. This is Bill, I got a problem. Oh, you got another problem again? What's your problem with this time? As it's Bill, you know that when I came here, I came here with this group of guys. We built a couple of games for you and I basically pin games as a background. And I was given a very good offer by Sam Stern. And I told him, whole, because I was not very honest with him. And I said, he didn't contact me. I just heard that the man that he had working for was going to be leaving. And I just contacted him to find out if there's a possibility for me to have any games with him. And he made me a very, very, very good offer. He said, Steve, I tell you what I'll do. You go ahead and take that job. But don't you dare take any one of the three guys that you brought here with you. Oh, this is the perfect skin closet. They were three guys. They got the reading, got themselves working in that place. And did you know they worked there for years and years and years and each one of the guys retired from Belly? And he let me go to Williams. And I started working there in February of 1960. So what was your first game that you really remember in 1960 that you designed? I worked on that. You saw that in the picture. Yeah, right, right. It wasn't the first game. Right, the Space Clier. Right. It was the Balls of Pop-Up. I only did that because they already had a good reputation in the Balls popping. And Sam Stern said, we wanted to make another one. I said, well, can I make it in my own self? And on the inside do what I like to do. I did. And I put buttons on the side. So when the ball was balanced, it bounced off the buttons and do some scoring, too. You know. And he liked that. So they made that game. They made it a good. So the meantime I was working and getting together to make pin games because very bad because maps were really already working on one game, Christmas that I told you about. And he couldn't get it finished. He just didn't get working and everything else. I was trying to help him out on that thing. And the meantime I was starting working on my own game. And the first game I made was Bubble. Now Bubble is in that funky cabinet. The drink cabinet. Because it's got like a bench where you can set your beers while you're playing pinball that the Space Age cabinet in his Williams called it. What did you think of that cabinet design?