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Episode 392 - Interview with Wayne Neyens 01-18-2017

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 46m·analyzed·Mar 23, 2017
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Wayne Neyens interview: Gottlieb designer recalls 1936-era pinball origins, innovations, and industry evolution.

Summary

Wayne Neyens, legendary Gottlieb pinball designer, recounts his career from 1936 starting Western Equipment and Supply and Supply as a draftsman through his decades at Gottlieb. He discusses early industry figures (Lyn Durant, Harry Mabs, D. Gottlieb & Co.), innovations including the free-play coin unit and pop-bumper silver contact switch (patented), the transition from gambling games to amusement machines, and detailed technical stories about designing circuits like Queen of Hearts. The interview captures Depression-era manufacturing culture, early plastics development, and Gottlieb's competitive advantage through engineering excellence.

Key Claims

  • Wayne Neyens started Western Equipment and Supply and Supply on February 11, 1936, as a draftsman fresh out of high school

    high confidence · Wayne stated: 'I can give you the date on that. I started there on February the 11th. 1936'

  • Nyhan invented a crucial free-play coin unit by modifying a patented push-type coin shoe mechanism, receiving $50 for signing away rights

    high confidence · Wayne described creating a free-play mechanism: 'I'll give you 50 bucks to sign off the rights to that' from GM Laboratories president

  • Charlie Castacre, a spring salesman, pioneered plastic injection molding for pinball posts and founded American Mold Product

    medium confidence · Wayne: 'Charlie got a hold of a little injection molding machine. And he made posts... And he became American Mold Product, I think was the name of his company'

  • Queen of Hearts circuit design was limited to three switches per ball slot due to mechanical tension constraints of steel blades

    high confidence · Wayne explained the technical constraint: 'you were limited to three switches per slot or whatever you want to call that slot'

  • Nyhan holds a patent on the pop-bumper silver contact switch that replaced carbon rings to prevent burnout

    high confidence · Wayne: 'the silver contacts which I made have a patent on them... That one I have a patent on'

  • Western Equipment was involved in illegal gambling game production with periodic police raids managed through bribes

    high confidence · Wayne: 'we were making all gambling equipment right, payout games gambling and you know that was illegal in Chicago... he'd pay them off and then he would put the lights on and say, okay, back to work, everybody'

  • D. Gottlieb & Co. told Nyhan 'As long as I own this company, you've got a job' after a dispute with Jimmy Johnson

    high confidence · Direct quote from D. Gottlieb & Co. during confrontation at factory

  • Nyhan was the sole draftsman Western Equipment and Supply, responsible for all technical drawings without blueprint machines

Notable Quotes

  • “As long as I own this company, you've got a job.”

    D. Gottlieb & Co. @ ~12:30 — Defining moment showing Gottlieb's loyalty and support for Nyhan, establishing their relationship that enabled Nyhan's career

  • “I know how to do that. I know what you want... It took me two days to do it.”

    Wayne Neyens @ ~18:00 — Nyhan's pivotal moment inventing the free-play mechanism that transformed the industry from gambling to amusement

  • “Queen of Hearts is my game because of that circuit, mainly because of the circuit.”

    Wayne Neyens @ ~35:00 — Reveals Nyhan's design philosophy: circuits and engineering elegance were central to his identity as a designer

  • “You can't have more than one person involved. You can't design... the four of us trying to work together, it didn't work out.”

    Wayne Neyens @ ~50:30 — Expresses strong design philosophy favoring solo authorship over committee design

  • “I was just ridiculous... you look back at it and you say you couldn't do that and it would never get anything done... but we did.”

    Wayne Neyens @ ~27:00 — Reflects on Depression-era manufacturing ingenuity and improvisation in primitive conditions

Entities

Wayne NeyenspersonD. Gottlieb & Co.personJimmy JohnsonpersonLyn DurantpersonHarry Mabsperson[name withheld pending review]personGottliebcompany

Signals

  • ?

    historical_signal: Detailed first-hand account of Depression-era pinball manufacturing (1936+), illegal gambling games, manufacturing culture, and the transition from payout games to free-play amusement machines

    high · Nyhan's direct testimony about Western Equipment's operations, police raids, and shift to legal free-play mechanisms

  • ?

    design_innovation: Multiple patented innovations: free-play coin unit modification, pop-bumper silver contact switch (vs. carbon rings), plastic post development, and complex relay-based circuits

    high · Nyhan holds patents; documented technical problems solved (carbon ring burnout, plastic shrinkage, three-switch mechanical limit in Queen of Hearts)

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Strong belief in solo designer control; negative experience with committee-designed Challenger game; preference for individual creative direction

    high · Quote: 'You can't have more than one person involved... the four of us trying to work together, it didn't work out'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Early pinball industry relied on informal networks: Nyhan's high school connection to Bud Mads led to Harry Mads sponsoring him at Gottlieb; personal relationships drove hiring and advancement

    high · Nyhan got Gottlieb job through Bud Mads friendship; Dave Gottlieb's direct loyalty intervention; informal mentorship from multiple figures

  • ?

    business_signal: Dog-eat-dog competitive environment in early pinball: reverse-engineering games overnight, copying designs, patent disputes; yet underlying friendships and respect between competitors

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.499

0:00
What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to 4 Amusement Only, this is Nick Baldrige.
0:12
Tonight's special guest really needs no introduction, but I'll give it a shot. His name is Wayne Nyans, and he was a designer at Gottlieb for many, many years. And many of their best-loved games from the 50s and 60s were his creations. Hello, Nick. Hi, Wayne. How are you?
0:33
Well, I'm pretty good. Excellent. I've been waiting here for you, and that's great. It's a good time for me. Excellent. Excellent. I know that you started in high school, right, at Western Equipment and Supply.
0:49
That's correct. Excellent. And you started as a draftsman? I can give you the date on that. I started there on February the 11th. 1936 You're coming up on the anniversary here I got good records on everything I've ever done I got records of everything I've ever made as far as money is concerned and the month, the date and all that stuff Wow I'm a figure guy, you know I gotcha I'm pretty fond of numbers myself so that's good so you went to Western Street out of Crane Technical High School is that correct? that's correct yeah and so after school I always got out early because I always had a job doing something and I got out about 1.30 so I ran down there and I ended up being hired and he put me to work the next night and I brought my drawing stuff with me and my drawing set and my triangles and everything. So I didn't know what they had.
2:05

high confidence · Wayne: 'I was the only one... we did not have a blueprint machine... we had a wooden frame with glass, and we had to take the drawing and the paper, put it in this frame and hold it up to the light'

Western Equipment and Supplycompany
United Manufacturingcompany
American Mold Productcompany
Queen of Heartsgame
Challengergame
Nicholas Baldridgeperson
[name withheld pending review]person
Eric Buhnanderperson
Robert T. "Bob" Smithperson
Emo Goodmanperson
Don Andersonperson
Herbert G. Breitensteinperson
GM Laboratoriescompany
Bud Madsperson
Crane Technical High Schoolorganization
Exhibit Supply Companycompany
Williamscompany

high · Western Equipment ordered overnight game copying; Jimmy Johnson/Len Durant split from Exhibit; Williams and United became friendly rivals

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: 1930s manufacturing lacked modern tools: no blueprint machines (used light-table method), single draftsman for entire company, hand-sketched schematics, improvised manufacturing methods

    high · Nyhan was sole draftsman; wooden frame with glass for blueprints; hand-made plastic posts with shrinkage issues

  • ?

    technology_signal: Plastic as revolutionary new material in mid-1930s; Charlie Castacre pioneered injection molding for pinball parts; initial quality issues (shrinkage) eventually resolved

    high · Nyhan: 'in 35 there was no plastics... plastic was so new, nobody knew anything about it... posts would shrink'

  • ?

    community_signal: Deep loyalty networks and personal honor: Dave Gottlieb's protection of Nyhan, Nyhan's loyalty to Western despite wage dispute, mutual respect between rivals, gentlemanly business conduct

    high · Gottlieb's job security promise; Nyhan's detailed expense accounting; Castacre described as 'gentleman'; mutual respect between Len Durant and Williams

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Queen of Hearts featured sophisticated poker-style payoff logic with complex relay circuits; mechanical constraints (three-switch limit per slot) required innovative circuit design to handle complex payoff combinations

    high · Nyhan designed poker-combination payoffs; limited by mechanical tension to three switches per slot; acknowledged as phenomenal circuit design

  • ?

    product_strategy: Manufacturing cost was constant design constraint: Tony Geride challenged Nyhan's designs to reduce material/relay count; balance between feature-richness and profitability was critical

    high · Tony Geride would count relays and declare designs unaffordable; Nyhan resisted but acknowledged profitability pressure

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Chicago pinball industry in 1930s-1940s operated in legal gray zone; Western Equipment produced illegal payout/gambling games; periodic police raids required payoffs to continue operations

    high · Nyhan: 'that was illegal in Chicago... Jimmy would have to pay them off... he'd tell us, put the lights out and everybody keep quiet'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Early pinball industry had fluid personnel movement: designers moved between companies (Western → Gottlieb), equipment suppliers became innovators (Castacre), and competing firms maintained friendly relationships despite rivalry

    high · Len Durant left Exhibit to found United Manufacturing; Charlie Castacre transitioned from spring salesman to mold manufacturer; Williams/United maintained friendly competition

    • And I was given a job in the engineering room and sitting directly behind me, and in fact, the man I was working for was Len Durant. I don't know whether you've ever heard of Len Durant. Yes, United.
    2:23
    United Manufacturing, right. He became the owner of United. He was a mechanical electrical engineer at Western. And when they closed up, he and Williams went over to exhibit and became a design team. and then of course the war came along and one thing or another they had a big fight and split up and Williams went his way and Durant went his way and they had united and Williams were two competing firms of course but they were both very good friends and they became well I wouldn't use the word enemy because that's not you saw a term but they became less friendly. I got you. But was it kind of a friendly competition?
    3:15
    Well, it was probably more than that. I never seen his plant when it was in operation, but I hear that the trucks were lined up for blocks picking up games that he was producing. So he did real well. Excellent. You know, if he had been in business, In business, when I left Western, I would have went to work for Duran. Really? Because Lynn and I became very good friends.
    3:51
    But he was still working for Exhibit. And so then I ended up over at Gottlieb because Harry Mads was over there. his son Harry's Harry Mads' son Bud Mads was my age and him and I used to pal around together we'd date together go out on Saturday nights and Harry liked me going out with Bud because I kept him in a straight and narrow I wasn't a drinker and a carouser like Bud was and I kept him out of trouble you know so So Harry really took a liking to me, and I worked for Harry for quite a long time and did a lot of work for Harry. But it didn't last that long as a draftsman. As soon as I got out of high school, when I graduated, I went to Jimmy, and I told him, well, I graduated, and I'm ready to start full-time.
    4:55
    And he said, well, I can't keep you on full-time. We don't have that much work for you. and so I said let me work in the factory and then whenever you got a job I'll run up and draw it for you and then I guess I'll go back and work in the factory and always I can help somebody and he said that's a great idea we'll do that and that's what happened I went down I go in the shop and I work and then I go up and do a drawing and I'd go back and work in a shop. And I worked in any department where there was somebody missing. I ran cables. I laced cables. I soldered play boards, relay banks. I ran a drill press. Worked in the stock room.
    5:47
    And, you know, what they were doing, they were teaching me the whole bit, you know. Yeah, the whole business. They didn't realize what they were doing to me.
    6:04
    Anyway, it ended up and Jimmy went, I suppose you heard, I don't know whether you heard the story or not, but Jimmy went broke and there were three guys, me and a fellow by the name of Don Anderson and Emo Goodman. and the three of us worked in this factory by ourselves and we rebuilt the Western baseball. Oh, okay. And Emil was a terrific electrical engineer. He really was something. And he regrew that circuit and made that game work. Anyway, we got the game going. We made a few games. We loaded them on trucks, the three of us. we worked six and a half days a week wow yeah and I was making 30 cents an hour so it was kind of rough going and anyway we got back at our feet and the factory's going and Jimmy says to me Wayne when we get back at our feet I'm going to take care of you know gee I appreciate this you know so now we're going and my job now is the final inspector. I'm in the end of the line in charge of this whole line of games coming off there.
    7:32
    And the guy next door to me, by this time I was making 40 cents an hour. He was making 50 cents an hour. And I said, you know, that's not quite right. But he was a married man. He had a couple of kids, you know. And I said, well, okay, you know. he needled me all the time he always kept that old needle in the man and of course it didn't do me any good so one morning I was not in a very good mood and Jimmy came in the back door and he always stopped at my spot and he said how many we got off Wayne and I tell him well we got 10 off we got 12 whatever you know he said okay push them a little bit we need more And I said, Jimmy, I want to talk to you a little bit. And he said, what about? I said, about money. He said, oh, well, I'll call you up to the office and we'll talk this afternoon. And I said, okay.
    8:31
    And so about 1 o'clock, 1.30 or so, he called me on the loudspeaker. Wayne, come to the office. I went up there and sat down in his office. And he said, what seems to be your problem? And I said, the guy working next to me, under me, makes more money than I do.
    8:49
    And Jimmy, you promised to take care of me. You haven't done it. Oh, yeah. I said, I'll tell you what we'll do, Wayne. I'll give you two and a half cents. I said, two and a half cents?
    9:02
    Yeah. Okay. So I walked down the stairs. It was 1.30 in the afternoon. I walked down from the office. I over got my toolbox put all my tools in and walked out the front door Jimmy didn't even know I was gone the whole factory come to a halt oh wow and you know I went to Gottlieb they put me to work immediately and I worked overtime and when I got home got to my house my apartment and there was Jimmy Johnson sitting in his car out in front of my house.
    9:46
    Wow. He gets out of his car, and I thought he was going to hit me, you know. He's tough, you know, and he's a big guy, and he was nobody to fool around with, if you know what I mean. Yeah. He was pretty tough. But anyway, I take him up in the house, my apartment, you know, and just me and my mother living there. And my sister was in a nursing school,
    10:15
    and so just my mother and I were there. And so my mother sat down with us, you know, and she listened to the conversation. And then Jimmy got up and left. And he said, I want to see you in the morning. And I said, I don't know, I don't know, Jimmy. And so my mother said, you've got to go back to Western. You've got to, you know. And all night long I worried about this, and I said, no, I'm not going to do it. And I went back to Gottlieb and went to work then. About 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock in the afternoon,
    10:53
    they gave me a job at testing playboards. So anyway, I'm busy doing my thing on the playboard line, and I feel this tap on my shoulder, and I turn around, here is Dave Gottlieb.
    11:10
    And I had never met Dave. I'd seen him at the shows and things, but I never met him. And he said, you Wayne Nines? I said, yeah. And he said, there's a guy at my office that I should fire you. And I said, that must be Jimmy Johnson. I walked out on him yesterday and I felt kind of bad about it, but I couldn't take him anymore.
    11:35
    And anyway, he said, well, what happened exactly? And so I told him. And he said, Wayne, let me tell you something.
    11:43
    As long as I own this company, you've got a job. That's amazing. And he meant it, you know. He was assuring me that Jimmy wasn't going to touch me.
    11:56
    And Dave wasn't a big guy. He was kind of short. He was probably only 5'6", or something like that. And Jimmy was at least 6'2". Whoa. And 250 pounds, you know. Mm-hmm. And I could just see a kid going up, putting his head up in Jimmy's face. You leave that kid alone, you know.
    12:23
    Anyway, that's how I got to Gottlieb. That's amazing. So you worked with some great people at Western. You named Linda Rahn. and Harry Mavs, and Jimmy Johnson, and some of the other folks. What were your opinions on all those people that you worked with there at Western and the work that they did there?
    12:46
    Well, I liked most of them. Some of them were, oh, I don't know, you know, just guys trying to make a buck in those days. You do anything. we had one guy Herb Breitenstein who was a pretty good designer but he never made anything but he hung on pretty good for six, eight months and you know that's the way they came and they went you know some of them I got acquainted with and knew well but some of them just came and went and moved on we had so many designers we had more designers than people sometimes really nobody knew what to make we were making all gambling equipment right, payout games gambling and you know that was illegal in Chicago yeah, that must have been interesting we couldn't make gambling games so every once in a while Jimmy would have to pay them off and they're going to raid the place, you know. So they call up Jimmy, hey, we're going to raid your place. And he'd tell us, put the lights out and everybody keep quiet. No, I want no noise. You know, and just like this, the place is dead. And then he managed to find some money someplace and he'd pay them off. And then he would put the lights on and say, okay, back to work, everybody. And we'd go back to work. I was back in the gambling days yeah then we got into the free play and that was I had a big part in that that's what I hear yeah can you tell me a little about that you invented a crucial unit from my understanding yeah the somebody had made a push type coin shoe that you put a nickel in and it would work.
    14:58
    Now, if you didn't have a nickel, of course, it would work. Right. But it had a lever underneath that if you activated this magnet, really, that was attached to it, it would throw a lever over and open up that coin chute so you could push it in without a nickel.
    15:17
    And he called it a free play coin chute. And, well, he got a patent on it, and he brings it to Jimmy Johnson, and Jimmy Johnson buys his patent. But now he's got it, so he's got the coin chute and everything, you know, and he draws all the engineers together. All right, boys, I want to show you something here. and I happen to be drawing at that particular time, so in effect, now I'm drawing. So I listen in on that conversation. I was a kind of a, I don't know, I was going to use the word fresh, but I wasn't fresh. I was pushy. Okay.
    16:05
    I pushed myself into things, and so I pushed myself into the inner circle to listen in on this new thing he had.
    16:16
    And he said, well, what are we going to do with it? I don't know how that's going to work and all this stuff.
    16:24
    And I said, I know how to do that. I know what you want. And Chippy says, what do you know about it? I said, I'll make it up for you. And he said, well, go ahead.
    16:37
    And I did. It took me two days to do it. and they put it in a game and it works and they were amazed so the next day now I'm back working in the factory next day I get a call from a loudspeaker and Jimmy calls me up to the office I go up there and he introduces me to this guy that made our step switches GM Laboratories the president of GM Laboratories and he says, hey kid, you know, you made this unit and I'll make you a deal. I'll give you 50 bucks to sign off the rights to that.
    17:19
    And I said, 50 dollars? Wow, I'll take that. Grab that 50 dollars so fast, sign that paper, you know, I didn't even know what I was doing. I said, my gosh, you know, years later, I thought, oh, man, if I applied for a patent myself right then, I'd be a billionaire, you know.
    17:45
    But anyway, that was the beginning of the free play unit, and it worked out fine. Yeah, I would say so. It really changed the industry. It did change the whole industry. It went from gambling to fun, you know, to amusement. Right.
    18:06
    So what was your opinion of the payout games that were being made at Western? Did you ever play them?
    18:14
    You know, they were just a way of making a living. Okay. They made other things besides pinballs, gambling pinball. They had what they called consoles, which, you know what a console is? And we made guns.
    18:32
    We tried to make an electric gun. All kinds of junk. One day, this is kind of a funny little story. You know, everybody copied everybody else.
    18:49
    It was dog-eat-dog days in those days. And Jimmy got in a game, and he called us all together, all the engineers. And he said, I'm going to get a game in here. I want you guys to stay here tonight and copy that game because I've got to get it out of here first thing in the morning.
    19:13
    You've got to be back on the truck and out of here. I can't have it any longer than one night. And so he got this game. They brought it in about 5, 6 o'clock. and we all got a part to build and we put that game together during the night and by morning we had the game.
    19:33
    Still picking up it, you know. Yeah. That's the kind of stuff we did. Sounds questionable. Well, you know, today it is, but at that time it wasn't. It was, you know, Things were so hard. You can't imagine the difficulty in getting money. I worked well. You just couldn't get the job. You couldn't.
    20:10
    And it's amazing what we did to make a buck. Just to make a buck. do you have any other stories like the one working in the dead of night like that well let's see you know I forget some of these things but it comes back to me I don't think I have any other stories like that seems to be there was one of those Everybody can't think about it at the moment.
    20:51
    I'll tell you something I think you'd probably be interested in. You know, back in, we'll say, 35, there was no plastics. Now, today, you cannot imagine that. Right. There was no plastic.
    21:13
    Nothing was made of plastic. nobody knew what plastic was that's incredible you know it's hard to I can understand how a young man like you can say how can that be yeah how can it be, no plastic but in those days on the pin games we used what they called barrel springs, flag springs double flag springs type of thing you know and the company that made these springs that we used on the pin games was I'm on the tip of my tongue and I forgot it now but well anyway the salesman for them was oh my I got a picture of my hair.
    22:16
    Where the heck is it? What was his name? Charlie. Was that his name? Charlie Castacre. Yeah. Charlie Castacre was a spring salesman.
    22:33
    And he got a hold of a little injection molding machine. And he made posts. and he brought these posts into Western and we were all looking at them. Oh boy, you use these in places, springs? Yeah, you just put a rubber ring on it and screw it down on the playboard. So that's pretty good, colorful, you know. Yeah.
    22:58
    But what we didn't realize at the time, you know, plastic was so new, nobody knew anything about it and stuff. you screw that down and in a week the posts were loose because the posts would shrink yeah they had a tendency to return back to their original state of a glob so it wasn't very successful at first but then they gradually improved the formula for plastic And, of course, plastic today is everything. Everything is plastic today. And it's a wonderful subject.
    23:45
    How it got to where it's at today must be very interesting to study it. But then plastic became stable, where it would hold its shape. And we used it extensively. So was Charlie the only manufacturer of the flag springs and things that were used in the 30s? Or were there multiple vendors that would come around trying to get the business? Charlie didn't make the springs. Oh, okay. He worked for this spring company. It was, I can't think of it now. But he worked for a spring company. And when he got this plastic mold and he would start selling these posts, he quit the spring company and went off making all the plastic pieces. And he became American Mold Product, I think was the name of his company. Okay, okay. And he started making all the bumpers and so on, you know. And he made the bumper bumper. Mm-hmm.
    25:03
    And he made all our plastic parts. So he developed the thumper bumper. He developed the pop bumper? He made the bumper. He made the original bumper. The spring bumper with the carbon ring, or? With the bumper, without the spring on it. Oh, okay. All right. Then he made two other bumpers. one was you said spring bumper which brings back he made one bumper that had a big spring on it that pulled down and pushed the ball out and then he had the other one that you know that you've seen and that's the one we picked Bob Smith picked it he was our engineer at the time and he picked out that one and he thought it would be a better one and so Charlie made pop uppers for us That's amazing. Wow. What a line of work.
    25:59
    Yeah, he did very well. I would imagine so. He was, and I tell you what, he was one nice guy. He was a, he was what you would call a gentleman. You know, there aren't many gentlemen in the world, but he was one of them. Excellent. I always felt that he was a gentleman.
    26:27
    I think he was. So, jumping around a little bit here, but back at Western again, you mentioned in another interview that your first job as a draftsman was to draw a payout unit.
    26:45
    Was this a solenoid-driven unit that pushed the coins out? Yeah. Okay. You know, that was pretty tricky for a kid, you know. I would imagine so. It's a pretty complicated piece of machinery. Yeah.
    27:06
    So that was your proving ground, huh? Well, I tell you, I was pretty well shook up that day. As you can imagine, you know, it's hard to put into words, but I had that butcher job in the back of my mind.
    27:32
    And I was supposed to be at the butcher shop, and here I am drawing parts and stuff in the engineering room of another company. it was kind of hairy that night my first day on the job I just think my drawing teacher is the one who got me the job I'm sure he's the one that put in the work for me and I got the job I'm sure that Jimmy not Jimmy we had an engineer Eric Buhnander. He was the chief engineer at Western.
    28:17
    He was really my boss. He really signed jobs. His name was Eric Buhnander. I'm assuming that you completed that drawing and gave it to Eric and met with his approval? is that how it went? Yeah, just another job waiting for me and I just went on from there.
    28:47
    I'll tell you another thing that's very interesting. At that time, I can tell you things and I know you're going to say I don't believe it,
    29:01
    but we did not have a blueprint machine. Wow. Oh, you know, today they don't even have blueprint machines. Right. But then we had the paper, and we had a wooden frame with glass, and we had to take the drawing and the paper, put it in this frame and hold it up to the light to make it to produce the print that's how we were making blueprints in a company at that time can you imagine that is incredible that's amazing that is probably not the most efficient way to do that it wasn't it's just ridiculous you look back at it and you say you couldn't do that and it would never get anything done yeah but we did so how many people had to draw the blueprints for each game I was the only one oh my gosh yeah and otherwise anything that didn't get drawn they'd just sketch it they'd make a part or whatever you know things of those were pretty rough so are you telling me that for every game that was sold for the blueprints that would go with the game the schematics so you would have to draw each one by hand well I not at Western we didn't we never put out a schematics oh okay I never made a schematic at Western. The games weren't that complicated. Yeah, that's a little less frightening than I was thinking.
    31:07
    That's good. Not until I got to Western did they make schematics. Another interesting circuit design was Queen of Hearts. Yes.
    31:22
    Are you familiar with the game? I've played it a lot. I have never worked on one. Well, underneath there were five holes, and you had five balls, and it was like a crap game.
    31:42
    All aces were, you know, it was one thing for a straight, one, two, three, four, five was another payout.
    31:53
    Two of one kind and three of another was another payout. the combination of playoffs was unbelievable and so I got drawing that circuit up one time and to see if I could do it you know because underneath the playboard the ball had to run over a rollover switch and make contact and the ball weighed so much and And the spring action of the blades was such tension that that ball would only have a maximum of three switches. You couldn't put four switches under that ball because of the angle at which it laid and the tension of the steel blades. and so you were limited to three switches per slot or whatever you want to call that slot. It's very interesting and the circuit is extremely interesting. If you ever get a chance to look at one, it's a phenomenal circuit. I enjoyed drawing that circuit up. I got the idea how to make it on Sunday. And I went down to work on Monday, and I dropped everything I was doing and drew this circuit because I wanted it down on paper. Yeah.
    33:28
    It was something. And, you know, everybody asks me, what's your favorite game? I have a lot of favorite games, but Queen of Hearts is my game because of that circuit, mainly because of the circuit. but it meant so much to me that I could do it and make it work. It was a very good game, very good game. But still, the collectors today, they like Queen of Hearts, but of course there are a lot of other games they like better.
    34:10
    So, you know, it's everybody's taste. yeah I'm going to have to order up a copy of the schematic for Queen of Hearts now and take a look at that yeah you look at that circuit that is something it's an amazing circuit you know when you do that when you tie things together to use the same switch to do various things you get feedback and you can have a problem you don't see it until it's too late. So you have to be so careful.
    34:49
    Every once in a while, one of these things sneak in, you know, and we don't know it. In fact, to go back a little bit, when I was starting at Gottlieb, we were making games, and of course I was just working on a playboard, so I didn't have anything to do with anything. but they had a game, they had trouble. They shipped out a game, I don't know, 50, 60 games, 100 games, I don't know what it was, to New York. And they found a mistake, some sort of a feedback when something happens, something else happened, whatever. Anyway, we had to fix it.
    35:36
    And they had to send a guy to New York to fix these games. and I got picked to do it. Dave come out and says, would you like to do it? I said, sure, I'd like to do it. Absolutely, I'd do anything.
    35:50
    So he sends me to New York to fix these games. I was in New York maybe almost a week, I guess. But when I left,
    36:04
    this is very interesting, And Dave gave me cash, you know, a couple hundred dollars, whatever it was. And maybe it wasn't that much, probably. At that time, money was cheap. Anyway, and a plane ticket, a train ticket.
    36:24
    And so I got on a train to New York, and I went to New York. I never been to New York. I didn't know anything. I was a country hick, you know. and I get out of the station, Grand Central Station there, and I walk up in the street and I got my suitcase and my toolbox, you know, and I'm standing there looking, what do I go do now?
    36:50
    I get on the streetcar and paid my nickel, you know, and dime, whatever it was, I think it was a nickel at that time, and I'm riding up. I had to go, I think Ponson was on around 46th, 47th, 48th Street, someplace in there. And so I'm watching street signs that go by and I say, you know, where am I? I see 34th, 35th, 36th, you know. I get off at about 46th Street and I look around, you know, So I get off at about 46th Street, and here was the Chesterfield Hotel.
    37:34
    Well, a hotel is a hotel, you know. So I go over and I go in and get a room, not realizing that at that hotel, all the vaudeville people use that hotel.
    37:50
    The place was full of dogs and shit. You can't believe it. The place was a madhouse. Anyway, I stayed there and I ate dinner at the Auto Map, you know, which you go and put a nickel in the slot and you get a hamburger or whatever. Anyway, I did my job and I came home and in the meantime, this is interesting, I wrote down everything I spent nickel for this cab or bus, five cents, newspaper, three cents, I had a list. And when I came back to Gottlieb, I went in to see Mr. Gottlieb, and I laid my list down on his desk, and it was changed. And he says, you got this left over? And I said, yep. And he said, oh, good. And so he said, okay, good job. I said, oh, yeah, he's very happy. Everything worked fine. I said, okay, well, go back to work. And I go back to my job on the playboy line, and the guy that's doing the job won't let me do it anymore.
    39:05
    You're not going to work here. This is my job. I didn't have a job. So I go to the superintendent, and he said, oh, I'll find you something to do. So I kicked around the shop. I did a little of this and a little of that. and the weeks went by and I finally got in the engineering room and I helped Harry Mads and we had another problem and Dave sent me out on another job this time to Philadelphia so I go into his office and he gives me a couple hundred dollars on the tickets on the train and he said go take care of this problem and I said okay and he says, then listen Wayne, I want to tell you something.
    39:54
    You stay at the best hotel in town and you eat in the hotel and you don't bring me back any money. And he says, I don't want any receipts or anything. He says, hey, have a good time. And you know, from then on, he'd just give me money and I'd go and whatever I had, I'd backhand hand it to him. Never questioned me about what I spent it for or anything. that's amazing and I trusted him we had a great relationship it sounds like it yeah we did so do you happen to remember the game that had the problem that got you sent to New York oh no no it was just a game ok so and you may have answered this question with our talk about Queen of Hearts but what was your favorite piece of engineering while you were at Gottlieb?
    40:55
    Well, as far as engineering was concerned was that four-player game. That was really something. But what I personally made was that contact switch. I have a patent on that. This is the pop-pumper spoon switch. It's a pop-upper. Yeah. But up until that time, we couldn't use a pop-up or anything of that magnitude, that action, because you just burn those carbon rings off. Yeah. Within a week or two, the rings would be gone. And so the silver contacts which I made have a patent on them That one I have a patent on Now, was that very expensive compared to the carbon ring?
    41:47
    Well, yeah, sure. We had the silver points, of course. Right. And the arrangement was a little more expensive. But, you know, you only have three, four, five, max, maybe six out of the game. So it didn't amount to that much. Okay.
    42:11
    I'll tell you a funny little story. Our superintendent at the time I was designing was Tony Bergo. Not Tony.
    42:20
    Tony Geride. And Tony Geride was our superintendent, and he was sharp as a tack. and he would come in my room you know I had a private room I worked all by myself so he'd come in and sit and talk to me and look at the games, play the games you know all curious but he was so sharp he would count the relays and he'd count and he'd end up in his mind how much that game was going to cost before anyone ever even decided whether we build it or not. He was already, hey, Wayne, I can't build that game. You've got too much material in there. You've got to take something out of it. And I said, I've already taken a relay out, you know, or I give them a hard time. And anyway, he was so sharp. We could figure out, it was his responsibility to make money for the company, of course. Right. And he had to make games that made money for the company. And so it was his responsibility, and he started with me because I made the game. You know, so he had to start with me. So did he really push you to design new circuits?
    43:40
    Did he what? Did he really push you to design new circuits to handle the same load that you were? Well, he tried to, yeah. I never paid any attention to him. I let him think, you know, he was influencing me. I didn't really do it. I did exactly what I wanted to do. At any time, they never had any really influence on me. I was kind of a rebel, you know. Yeah. Well, your games were probably all the better for it.
    44:16
    No, you know, you can't have more than one person involved. You can't design. I can't. We built this game, what was it, that two-player game? Challenger.
    44:37
    Challenger, yeah. Challenger. Well, four of us built that game, and it looks like it. If I designed it myself, it would have been entirely different. and I'm sure with any of the others, if Doc had done it or Smith or Elvin or whoever,
    45:00
    it would have been different. But the four of us trying to work together, it didn't work out. But we made the game and then we had fun with it.
    45:10
    I had one. I took one home and put it in my basement, my playroom. And my kids had fun with it. That's good. You know, it wasn't the best game in the world, but it was a challenge for two people to play it. Yeah. Well, do you recall something that you might have done differently on it?
    45:34
    Oh, I don't know. I really haven't thought much about it, but when I had it in the house, I looked at it every once in a while, especially if the kids were playing it.
    45:46
    I don't know. I think end to end, I don't think. I think I would have added you stood side by side. I think it would be better. Oh. I don't know. That would be very interesting because you've got that person right beside you that you can, you know, kind of elbow and.
    46:11
    No, you know, you're near each other where you can. kibitz a little bit. Yeah. But if you're five or six feet away and you're in an arcade, you can't talk back and forth. And the spontaneity or whatever is gone. There was a lot of things wrong with that game. Anyway, it's all history. Yep, yep.
    46:42
    So in the 1950s, In the 1950s, that was really the rise of the two- and four-player game. You've talked in the past that when you designed a four-player game and a two-player game, the four-player was the stronger version.
    47:03
    Why did you feel that way? Well, we sold more of them, I guess. The first game was a four-player game. we never thought about making a two-player.
    47:17
    We made the four-player, and Dave set the price. He was going to sell it for. And we had all the distributors come in, and we had a big showing. It was a four-player. We thought that was going to be the game of the future.
    47:34
    And when they found out what it was going to cost, they all kind of backed off, you know. Weren't too filled with it. Anyway, we sold a few and then we're into a two-player because of money. So we made Duet, which is a two-player game.
    48:00
    And so we kind of alternated two and four players for quite a few years. I'll tell you something extremely interesting. on the four-player game,
    48:16
    I sent a game out into the field to a distributor, a four-player game, that I metered in such a way that it counted every single, every time the game was played by one player or by two players or three players or four players. So I knew, so I could find out immediately how many times that fourth player played and how many times it was three players playing and how many times two players could play.
    48:54
    So we sent the game out and we got it back a couple of months later and you wouldn't believe. The fourth player was very seldom used.
    49:07
    Practically nothing. and the third pair was almost as bad. Actually, when they bought four pairs, the third and fourth pair was never used.
    49:20
    But, you know, we didn't tell any operator because, you know, we were making money selling four players. Right. Stop the sales. Yeah. Yeah, it's a sale, you know. So we made up both ways, but we in our hearts knew that the four-player wasn't quite as good. So it would take the operator longer to make back their investment, I guess, on the four-player.
    49:48
    Yeah. So, well, actually, that kind of mirrors my playing coming up, you know. I very rarely play in groups of four unless it's with a big group of people. I have a four player game in my garage here I play a lot what is it?
    50:08
    Spirit of 76 oh that's a wonderful game I'll tell you a story about that in a minute I got that four player but I play it alone and occasionally somebody will come and we'll play a few games and they'll play by themselves. Walk them in the house and cook dinner or whatever, you know. And they're still playing. They're playing. People play a game by themselves and they like it better. They go into a trance, you know.
    50:48
    And you're part of that game. Right. You're part of that game. Yeah. Have you ever heard the story of how I got the Spirit of 76? Yes, it's a wonderful story. Would you mind telling it to my listeners one more time?
    51:05
    All right, sure. We had a lunchroom. We had lunch every day, and the top echelons sat at the same table all the time. So Judd Weinberg was our president at the time, and he was there. Alvin was there. I was there.
    51:26
    Oh, I don't know, a person, an agent, and a couple others were there. around this table and everybody had gone and eaten and gone and we're through and now we're holding a little meeting which we did every day we you know what's going on anything new any whatever and so just as uh well we got to make a uh a guess on how many spirit of 76 we're going to make. And everybody said, oh, I don't know. One guy would say, well, 2,000, 3,000, 2,500, and went around the table. I don't say nothing. And the judge says to me, Wayne, you're not saying anything. How come? I said, oh, you know, if I told you how many, Judge, you'd just laugh. That's all you'd do. You can't believe what I'm going to tell you. Oh, come on, I don't laugh. I said, okay. I said, $10,000. Everybody laughed. I said, now there you go, you see? I told you you were going to laugh. And he said, if we make $10,000 winning that $10,000 game, it's yours and I'll deliver it to your house. And I said, Judge, you got a deal. You see, but he didn't know and didn't realize that I knew. Because I had been figuring this out for two years ahead of time.
    52:50
    When we had the bicentennial, everybody in this country is going to want red, white, and blue. And Europe, too. You know, I'm thinking to myself, Europe, they like American stuff. They're going to be excited about this bicentennial. and so we made it good white and blue in the cabinet and the game and it was a good game besides and so we had a phenomenal run we made oh I don't know over 14,000 so you see our normal runs at that time was 2,000 3,000 so it was fantastic Yeah. Absolutely fantastic. We had trucks lined up in the street out there waiting to pick up games. We were making over 400 games a day. Wow. Now, you stop and think for just a minute. There's 60 minutes in an hour.
    54:01
    And you work eight hours. That's 480 minutes a day. Now, you take out two breaks, the 10-minute breaks in the morning and night, It was on the 460.
    54:17
    Have I got my figures right? Yeah. I mean, you have to make one every minute and ten seconds. You have to push a game out the door. Holy cow.
    54:32
    You know, when you stop and think at it, think about it. At that time, we were running crazy. Yeah. I was the chief engineer at this time so my responsibility was the whole shop to keep that shop running and it was crazy do you have any recollection of how many people were working in the factory at that time?
    55:00
    no I have no idea must have been an awful lot of people I would say 6 or 700 Wow. That's incredible. The only overtime we put in was in the punch press area. We ran a double shift in the punch press area. But outside of that, it was phenomenal. Oh, when you ran into a problem, someone made an error, maybe in a cable, running the cable for where it was wrong.
    55:43
    You can imagine how things backed up. Oh, yeah. You know, just a glitch and it backs up. How frequently would something like that happen?
    55:58
    Oh, two or three times a day. Wow. something like that. There was always something going wrong someplace.
    56:06
    You know, anything as complicated as that whole thing was, there always had to be something going wrong.
    56:17
    I was always chasing around. But, you know, that game came at a bad time as far as electronic games were concerned because we were so wrapped up in production of mechanical games, we didn't have time to work on electronic games.
    56:42
    Engineering didn't have time for such a thing. We were all so busy chasing things down. So we kind of neglected that electronic circuitry.
    57:00
    And we finally got into it, but we got into it too late. And was that something that you were directly involved with, the System 1?
    57:15
    Well, I started it, yeah. But I didn't know anything about electronics. That's what I was going to ask, yeah. Was that a real learning experience there, or how did you deal with that? I had no experience in that area at all. So I had to hire a couple of guys, you know, and I had to rely on them.
    57:40
    And they, of course, didn't know anything about pinball machines. You know, it was a, if I had nothing to do where I could work with the electronic guys at the time,
    57:58
    I think we could have done an awful lot better. But we, you know, it was just, this is the way it happened. Yeah, had to keep stuff going out the door. Yeah, and we were making money hand over fist. And then, of course, Judd sold the company to Columbia,
    58:18
    and he walked out the door, and Columbia was stuck with it. And were you still there at that transition to Columbia?
    58:32
    Yeah. Yes, I was there. Well, yeah, that was towards the end of the EM era, correct? Yeah, pretty much so. Yeah, a couple years and then there. I made so many games, you know, They all kind of run together except for a few for some particular reason. Yeah. What are some of the ones that stand out to you?
    59:00
    Well, some of the games that everybody likes. I have my favorite games, of course. Queen of Hearts is my favorite. Slick Chips, of course, everybody likes, so I like that too.
    59:16
    You follow the popular opinion? Yeah, well, you know, you can't help but like it when everybody else likes it. There must be something to it.
    59:27
    But, of course, I liked all the games when I got through with them, or I wouldn't have built them. I made a lot of games I threw out when I got through with them. Oh, yeah? I didn't even show it to a person, Tony or Judd or any of those guys. So how frequently would that happen? Was that a common occurrence as you were developing new ideas? Yeah, I'd do some crazy thing, you know, and I'd get through that plate and I'd say, oh my God, how can I do that? How can I do such a stupid thing? And I'd throw it out. They'd never even seen it. They'd see me working on it, you know, and wonder about what happened I always had four, five, six games ahead of production, so I got pretty busy. I can imagine. Godley cranked out a lot of games, and you were right in the middle of a lot of that.
    60:29
    Oh, yeah. So I'm looking at another game in particular called Sweet Adeline. Oh, yeah. Oh, there's a game. Yes.
    60:44
    You notice anything peculiar on that? The numbers are bingo numbers, I believe I've heard you say before. Yeah, they are bingo numbers. I was taken right off the bingo card.
    61:01
    And, you know, Dave wouldn't build a game that had a bingo card on it or was associated with a bingo card. But in this game, he didn't know it. And not until after we got through running the game did I tell him I took those numbers off a bingo card.
    61:16
    What did he say? I don't know. I think he was ready to fire me at the moment. You know, just kidding. We just kid around. But he was shocked. He didn't realize it. Nobody realized it. You snuck one in.
    61:33
    Yeah. It was right off a bingo card. I think it was probably one of the belly bingos I had in the shop.
    61:42
    I had a room that I worked in, and I had a lot of room for games. And they would buy one of every company's game and bring it in and set it up in my room.
    61:58
    And so I could go over all these games. And actually, they'd set up like a Williams game. I wouldn't even look at it.
    62:09
    I didn't want to be influenced by it. Okay. But when they bring me a ballet game, a bingo, that I studied because I love the circuitry in that bingo game. I love those circuits. I love to take their schematic and browse over it because I tried to pick up ideas from them. Yes. And did you know Don Hooker?
    62:41
    No, I never met him. Well, he designed most of the bingos, as you probably know. He was a big man up there, and I didn't know him.
    62:54
    One of their designers, I can't think of his name, but he moved to Mountain Home too. He lived in Mountain Home and I didn't know he lived here until he died and I saw his name in the obituary column. I said, for heaven's sake.
    63:13
    I knew he was right here and I never knew him. What a coincidence. Yeah. And another strange thing, but Steve's parted. Well, he gives me, I'm here, you know, and my wife is quite sick and the telephone rings and it's Steve. And he says, hey, how are you doing? I said, good, good, Steve. What are you doing? He says, I'm coming over for lunch.
    63:41
    I said, you're what? I said, what are you doing here in the mountain home? He said, my brother lives here.
    63:51
    His brother lives just down the street. No kidding. Yeah, so Steve would come here every once in a while, you know, and whenever he'd come, he'd always come over here and make me cook for him.
    64:08
    But I never met Steve until after I retired. Really? All those guys held it on together. Uh-huh. Norm and Steve those guys they pelt around and they I think it was Norm Clark had the boat one of the guys had a boat unlike Michigan and the whole gang would go out together on this boat but I never went with them I never had anything to do with them I never went golfing with them I never went out on a boat with them and they thought I was kind of, you know,
    64:55
    but it wasn't that I didn't want to have anything to do with them. I didn't want to be involved with their thinking on the game. I wanted to think my own way. I had nothing to do with anybody.
    65:10
    You didn't want to be unduly influenced. I can understand that. You know, we would meet. We knew each other because of the shows. Yes.
    65:23
    I'll tell you another funny story. We all met at these different car machine shows every year. We knew each other, but I never associated with them. But when I was 37, they had a show at the Sherman, you know.
    65:52
    And me being young and innocent, you know, like I was, they had me stay up in the room. They had rooms up in the hotel where they had special games. And this one year was my first year there.
    66:10
    So it wasn't my, it had to be, see, I started in February, so it would be a month later or two months later. Anyway, I was pretty young.
    66:24
    And so I'm up, my job was to sit up in this room and protect the game. Jimmy had this game where he gave keys away down on the floor. Yeah, he had a barrel of keys. And you select the key and you go up and you try it in the lock. And if it fit, you won the game. Huh. You know, one of those deals. Yeah. So my job was to stand alongside of that game. And Jimmy told me, he says, now, if anybody's key fits that lock and they open that door, yell for the police. because nobody's got a key to that lock except me, and it's in my pocket.
    67:07
    I sat up there for three days watching that game, and these guys coming in trying that lock, you know, never did open it. That was my baptism, you might say, of the toy machine industry because I met all the guys, you know.
    67:30
    So they all knew you from way back in the Western days, huh? Oh, yeah. And also, another thing interesting, Jimmy Johnson had an arcade in the lobby of the Sherman Hotel.
    67:49
    And he kept, oh, I don't know, six, eight, ten, twelve games in there, something like that. and after I'd been with Western a year or so, I got the job of repairing all those games. So almost invariably at night after I leave work, I go down there and touch them up, you know. Yeah. Before I go home at night, I stop down at the Sherman Hotel and fix up the games.
    68:19
    Very interesting. I mean, even more experience at games and the people playing the games, you know. Yes. All that experience added up into what I was, what I became. That's pretty incredible.
    68:34
    What a story, yeah? Oh, yes. So back to bingos for a second. I'm a huge fan of bingos myself, which is kind of unusual, especially for someone my age. Why are you a fan of bingos? I really think that the circuitry is amazing.
    69:00
    Oh, you mean from a technical standpoint? Well, I like the gameplay as well. You do, huh? Yes. I find it very, very challenging.
    69:11
    And, of course, I don't play for money. I just play in my home here. But it's... You know, I don't think I've ever shot a ball on a bingo game. I don't think so. I studied them. Yeah? Looked at them.
    69:32
    Understood them. But I don't think I ever actually shot a game. Really? Well, but I don't think I ever shot a game.
    69:41
    Well, it can be quite a thrill. I really never thought about it, you know. Huh. Why would you have anyone in your home?
    69:54
    Well, I just find them fascinating and a lot of fun to play with all the mechanical movement of the numbers in the back box.
    70:04
    And all that kind of stuff really fascinates me and makes for a real serious thinking game, I think.
    70:13
    Oh, that it is, yeah. Big circuit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I used to love to study that circuit each time we got a game in. I'd sit down and study it to see what changes were made in it and so on. Yeah. I thought it was pretty good. They really evolved over time, too.
    70:35
    So you really did not enjoy, you mentioned you didn't enjoy playing the payout games that came from the 30s. No, I played them. Did you ever play the one-ball games in the 40s with the horse races? No. No?
    70:52
    Yeah, we had one. You know, we made one. I did know that, yeah. Oh, I think it was called Daily Races. It was the New Daily Races. That was the one. New Daily Races. Yeah. And, you know, that was quite a game. A good friend of mine, he was put in charge of building that game, and he was very unhappy. He didn't want to build that game in the worst way.
    71:27
    Well, why was he made to do it? Yeah, they made him do it, you know. He came from Western Electric. He used to run their cable department, Western Electric.
    71:43
    His name was Frank Underhill. Okay. Great guy. Good friend. He was a good friend of mine. He moved to Arkansas, over on the west side of Arkansas. I didn't get to see him too often, but we'd go back and forth occasionally.
    72:06
    After I moved down here. So, you were at Gottlieb at the time that New Daily Races was produced? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was in 47.
    72:20
    Oh, yeah. So, do you know what the push was behind that? No, I really don't. I don't know why I made it. That was very unusual for Gottlieb, especially at that time. I mean, that's just post-war, but, yeah, interesting. You know, sometimes you just do things because you try to keep the factory busy. You know, a lot of people, well, I shouldn't speak for all people, When I was designing, I felt a very strong responsibility to the people that depended upon me for a living.
    73:13
    Like we had maybe, when I was designing, we had maybe 200 people or 100 people. But each one of them had a family of four or five. all these people depending on me and then our suppliers and their people and their and they were depending on me producing a game that always affected me and it drove me more than anything thinking I gotta get a game gotta keep this factory busy there's so many people and I don't think we ever closed up a day when I was designing.
    74:00
    Wow. That's quite an accomplishment. And that pretty much explains how there are so many games credited to you because of that sense of duty. I think that's a wonderful thing. Made a lot of games. Yes.
    74:17
    And so another question about that sweet ad line with the numbers on the back glass there. Is there a reason why the number sequences are only scored in vertical columns instead of vertical and horizontal? Would it have been too bingo-esque?
    74:40
    Well, I think that might have had something to do with it, but I just wanted it to look like a bingo card, so I put them all in line. And then, of course, Parker followed the same layout almost that I had.
    74:56
    He followed it as much as he could all the time. So would you do kind of a sketch of what you thought the art should kind of follow? Yeah, I always did. You did? Wow. But, you know, so many times, Parker was a great artist. He was just fantastic. And he'd just laugh at my art because I'm a poor artist.
    75:27
    I draw things, you know, like I had a game I called Monkey Shine. And, of course, Dave didn't like that because the word shine meant black.
    75:41
    But they called that, I forget what it was now. did that become Tropic Isle I named every game but they didn't use the name but I tell you one name our first anabole game was called Flipper and that game I told Dave right from the beginning this game is normally called Flipper after Harry Mads I always thought it would be a great name See, the first game that Harry made with a flipper in it was called Flipper.
    76:25
    Maybe you didn't know that. But the first Flipper game was Humpty Dumpty. Yes. but Harry made it and he called it Flipper and it was just a glass of a and the artwork was such just a man standing in a light box a tux on or something it wasn't a very exciting glass and we were just about ready to go into production just about within a week maybe.
    77:12
    And on a Monday morning, Dave came into our engineering room and says, I got an idea. He says, don't do that game justice. We're going to change the game. We're going to go into a nursery series. We'll call it Humpty Dumpty.
    77:43
    And we called in Parker and he changed the glass, the play board, and we changed the game just a little bit. I think we added a sequence in or something. We did a little something to the circuit. And the whole thing was changed over to Humpty Dumpty. And that was the beginning of that nursery rhyme series of games we had.
    78:10
    But it was just about ready to go into production. The screens were cut, the playboard screens were all cut.
    78:20
    And he changed it and you know, and for the best. Because boy, that was beautiful. That Cinderella cut.
    78:29
    That Humpty Dumpty glass. Yeah, that whole series of glasses is really something. Yeah, really a part really put his heart into it. Mm-hmm.
    78:44
    Parker was really an artist. And, you know, he never played pinball. Really? He would come into the showroom,
    78:56
    he would always come, he'd come around 4 o'clock, 4.30 in the afternoon, and we'd all gather together and do his drawings.
    79:08
    And he would come in, he laid the drawings out on the top of the play boards of the games that we had in the showroom.
    79:18
    But he never played a game. Never. Would he ever observe somebody playing just to see how his artwork lit up or anything like that? Nope. Wow.
    79:30
    He never touched a game. which is strange yeah I always say why didn't he play but he never of course he was all business he was he's that kind of guy he just he came to do his job and he went you know he had a studio in his home and I think it was up on the second floor of his house. And he invited us guys up there one time, Smith and I and Tony, and we went up there and had dinner. His wife cooked a nice dinner, and then we went up to his studio.
    80:19
    He did a lot of work at home, too. So we could see where he was working. So how quickly would he turn around? the art for a game?
    80:36
    Well, you know, the artist, like, well, you know, Parker was particularly fast. He could draw so quickly. But see, he never cut screens. he would draw and then the screen cutters would take over ok but he was a good artist we had two other artists after he died can't think of their names now Morrison was one Morrison yeah He was a young guy, you know, and funny as the dickens. He was a character. And, you know, he was chasing women all the time, you know, and he would sneak his girls' names on the glasses, you know. And once I found out that he was doing it, it was a challenge. Actually, a lot of times he didn't put them on there, you know, but he says, it's on there, you know, you'll never find it.
    82:02
    But I think sometimes he never put them on. Well, every once in a while we'd find something he snuck on that we didn't know was on there.
    82:13
    He was a character. He didn't live too long. It was a shame, too, because he was a young man. He died after I left. So I don't know. Or... He died after I left. The other person that I see that has done some art is Art Stenholm. Yeah, Stenholm. Any stories about Art? Well Art wasn't a very good artist. He never... He was a good artist, I guess, in his own set, but pinball art was not his style. He was not thrilled with the idea that he had to draw it. He didn like us guys you know We were a bunch of characters We really are But he was more of a serious artist I think He didn't take much to heart work. But when he left, we got, what's his name, the other one? Morrison. His cellar name slipped from mine, you know? Yeah. When Morrison was drawing, he fell behind and we needed some hard work done.
    83:44
    So Chud told me to go to Stenholm and give him a layout of a board and a glass, tell him what we want, and give him the drawings and tell him to come up with something, you know. so I went down to Art's house he lived in Indiana just over the line from Chicago it wasn't far I ran down to have to work and gave him the drawings and told him to draw so he made a drawing for us and it just didn't compare with Morrison. Morrison was a pretty good artist. And Parker, of course, was outstanding.
    84:42
    I don't know. He just didn't have the feel for games. He was an artist, but he would not... It took a certain feel.
    84:58
    And Parker had it. He had the humor. Yes. Like, that game is so beautiful. I can't think of it now, but he has humor in all his games. Sometimes he puts just a little humor in, sometimes it's really humorous.
    85:26
    One of my favorite glasses of his is Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill, yeah yeah, that was a good one that's a beautiful blast so did Art spend home and did he work at AdPosters or was he actually with Gottlieb as a we never had an artist they all worked for AdPoster ok or the other, we had And, you know, another company, Parker worked for... I think I have a note on that. It's an original company that burned down, right? Yeah.
    86:12
    It burned down twice. Right. That's some bad luck. Do you know what happened that caused it to burn down?
    86:21
    Well, I tell you, it was in a fire trap. That building was a fire trap. There's no question about it. I was in it at one time, and I tell you, I was glad to get out of it.
    86:35
    It was reeked with chemicals, and the place was saturated. You know, it was ready to go up into a flame. Wow. And the first time they managed to get it out pretty quick, but the second time it just went to pieces.
    86:54
    They never came back after that. I have a note that it was called Reproduction. Reproduction Company, yeah. So that was the name of it, Reproduction Company. Yeah, Reproduction.
    87:10
    So, can you tell me a little about your experience with World War II? What part of the Army were you in?
    87:21
    I was in, well, I went into the Army and ended up in the Signal Corps. Did you finish up as a lieutenant?
    87:30
    Yeah. I never got any promotion. So I hear that David Gottlieb had a hand in getting you out of the Army after World War II. Is that true?
    87:45
    Oh, yeah. When the war ended, we all got leave. I got a leave. I came home and of course I went over to the factory to see who came back. All my friends were there and some of them were back, some of them weren't.
    88:08
    But Godley was there and of course Nate and so on and Bob and Tony were all there. and what's-his-name was in the office with Dave at the time, Senator Capehart.
    88:28
    Capehart was the owner of World Assure, and he was also a senator. And he was a friend of Dave's, and he happened to be sitting in Dave's office when I walked in. Interesting. and so we got talking you know and Dave said well when you coming back you know how soon can you get back and I said well I don't know whatever that army does you know they take their time about things so I don't know how long it'll take but as soon as I get out I'll be back and so K-Party he's sitting there you know taking this in and I don't know if Dave told him get me out or whether he turned his own or whatever. But within three or four days after I got back to my unit, I was out.
    89:24
    You know, it's good to know a senator. Yeah, probably so. Yeah, but that just happened that way. He used to come over and talk with Dave maybe once a month or every couple of months. he'd come and they'd sit in there and smoke their cigars.
    89:45
    You walk in their office and it reeked with smoke. It reeked. Was there ever a reason that Gottlieb never got into the jukebox business? Was it because of that friendship between Wurlitzer and Gottlieb? Well, it's an entirely different field. Yes. It's a different field entirely than that.
    90:19
    Yeah, we weren't in that area at all. It was our expertise. I got you. Yeah, I know that Rockola, for example, in the 30s, ended up in the jukebox business, But they made some gains as well.
    90:43
    Yeah, well, see, they were located right near Western. They were about two blocks away. In fact, we used to play baseball in their parking lot.
    90:58
    Wow. Rockola had a big lot. and Western and Rockola were Jimmy actually worked for Rockola at one time when they were selling pianos or whatever they were doing so we were kind of connected to Rockola we had a pretty good baseball team in fact that's how I got to know So a lot of the guys in the industry, younger guys, because the older guys didn't play, but younger guys, we all played. Our high school kids, you know, were shortly out of high school. And we had uniforms, caps, and shirts, and we had a record tournament. Wow, serious. We got to know each other pretty well. And I knew one guy. I happen to remember his name because it's so easy. His name was Lavender. Huh. And Lavender worked for, let me think.
    92:22
    Oh, I can't think. But anyway, I was going to go work there, but then when I got off the streetcar and Gottlieb was close by. Oh, it was Genco.
    92:37
    Genco, yeah. Genco was just a block the other way, so I didn't go down to Genco. Lavender worked at Genco, and so I would have went there. Of course, then I would have been with some... Steve Kordach. Cordek, yeah, eventually. Because Cordek came into the industry about the same time. He was in some government project,
    93:05
    working in building trails in the forest or something. The government worked just to keep busy and get little money in. but he and I could have been a team that would have been something yeah but your games just personally to me mean an awful lot they brought me an awful lot of enjoyment so thank you very much for all your work I'm glad to hear that you know I've heard a lot of people have told me that and of course I don't see it because I'm so close to it it's work to me it's I always had fun playing the game so would you play other games especially as you went up the ladder, so to speak, to chief engineer? Would you play competitor's games ever, or were you strictly a company man as far as game playing went? Just company. I wouldn't play any other game. Gotcha. You know, we had a showroom that was right around by the offices. You know, we had one of each of our games in there, like a four-player, two-player, regular five-ball game, at a ball game, all lined up in the showroom. And at night, you know, shortly before going home, we'd wander and go to the washroom or whatever, and I'd go through the showroom, and I'd stop and play.
    94:55
    And Dave, almost every night, would come out of his office around 4.30, and he would always go to the at-a-ball game. he wouldn't play the multiple players or the single player but he played an edible and I'd kid him every once in a while come on move over and play one of the other games and give us a break and he'd just laugh first come first serve so you know hey Dave you win but I would be earlier tomorrow but he loved to play anables and I think I did too really I still prefer an add-a-ball game to it.
    95:41
    Because there's no limit. You can keep playing forever if you have the skill. Yeah, it's just a fantastic idea. Yeah.
    95:55
    So, you know, I think I told you about how the name got Flipper. Yes. I was on the first paddle ball game in his honor of Harry Mads. I always respected Harry. And you worked with him back at Western.
    96:12
    Yeah, I knew him at Western. So was it interesting coming to Gottlieb and Mads had already made the transition?
    96:20
    Well, that's really why I went to Gottlieb was because of Harry. I knew Harry was at Gottlieb. And so I just took a shot, you know, and walked in the front door and told them I'm here to work if you'll lead somebody, and they hired me on the spot.
    96:39
    And did you work well with Mads? Oh, yeah, yeah. I went to work. I left Western about 1.30, 2 o'clock, and by 3 o'clock I was working at Gottlieb, and I worked there until 6 o'clock.
    96:56
    It was three hours. you know but you know one place is the same as another one company is the same as another they both do things they make play boards they make bottom panels they make light boxes and they assemble them in an area one called it a bull ring one just called it a line you know just terminology different but the method was almost identical. So which part of your career did you prefer? You did so many different things. Which was your favorite thing to do? Was it drafting? Was it designing circuitry? Was it designing a game in its entirety? What was your favorite thing?
    97:49
    Oh, I don't know. I think drawing circuits was my favorite thing. I love the challenge of drawing a circuit. And I'll tell you one thing I always did when I'd go to a game. This is very interesting.
    98:05
    I would lay out my play board, get all the facts and all the things I wanted to do with it. Then I'd draw the circuit.
    98:14
    Then I'd put the game together. And when I got done with it, I got it all set up, ready to play, and I pushed the coin shoot in and I wanted the ball to come back to me and I wanted to shoot it and I wanted to play right.
    98:33
    Never, except one time. In all the games I've built, only one game did I ever put together without an error. What was that game?
    98:43
    I don't know. I've gotten it in history. But, you know, that is a tremendous challenge. you know you can make a mistake in drawing the circuit, you can make a mistake in wiring, you can make a mistake in soldering there's so many places you can make an error and to make it come out where you can close it up and push the coins you didn't play was always a challenge and I loved it put a game together and when I played it I thought wow you know usually I had to fix something wire I've been making games myself I think I mentioned I've designed a couple games and I've wired up one and that was the most nerve wracking thing was pushing the coin switch that first time it is a little exciting you know after all that work put into it and then it comes down to that final push I'll tell you another something that might be interesting you know what a Jones plug is oh yes that is all you know is a Jones plug well back before the Jones plug there was a life you know we had a life back then Jones came along and made the plug but that was fine But we had a whole series of fingers.
    100:21
    They were punched out of brass, stapled to a Bakelite strip. And this strip would be screwed against the back of the cabinet. And then the playboard would have a strip that would match. He said when you put the playboard down, the fingers would meet. and make contact.
    100:50
    And that's the way we made contact. Of course, when you raise a board up, you didn't have any contact, so you couldn't try with a board up, you know. You had to try with everything with the board down. But it was so hard to work on. But we used that for several years before the Jones plug came along. And, boy, everybody loved that Jones plug. When you put that together and plugged it together, it was together.
    101:18
    Oh, yeah. So was that a particular vendor that came around with the Jones plugs? You know, I don't recall.
    101:28
    It must have been. I don't recall, but it must have been somebody came up with it and came around and sold it to us. I don't recall it now. I should remember it because I was there when we started using it. I remember using the fingers, and they were a pain, I'll tell you.
    101:49
    I've only ever worked on games that have them in the door, you know, where the front door actually comes off, but not under the play board. That must be pretty rough. because I imagine when you lift it, you could accidentally shear some of the fingers off.
    102:10
    Well, yeah, well, you could short out too. Yeah. You know, you'd short out onto another circuit. Oh, gosh.
    102:19
    And, you know, it could blow a lot of lights and stuff. Yeah. Well, another thing I did, kind of interesting to you, I think, When I started in 36, they were just changing over from battery-operated games to power pack.
    102:40
    They had these big cells, ones about two inches in diameter and eight inches high or whatever. Yep. And there were three or four of them in a game, and the operator, he handled that. But once he got electricity, he had to plug it in a wall, scared the daylights out of him. You know, they didn't like that, you know. But they had a bunch of games with these batteries in it, and they'd bring them back into the factory and have a power pack, have the batteries taken out and the power pack put in, and so they'd now be electrified. You know, you could plug it in the wall.
    103:18
    So they'd bring these games back into Western, and one of the things I used to get to do was to switch these power packs out into the batteries out into the power packs. And when I had to open up the game, all the nickels that were laying in the back of that cabinet were mine.
    103:41
    They ended up in my pocket. So whenever they bring a game in, they have a power pack for them. Boy, I was there.
    103:48
    I was ready for that one, you know. and I'd love to do that but when I did that it worked on me not only did I get the few nickels that were laying in there but I got to meet the operators of course the operators were always looking for somebody to come fix their games so I had several operators that I worked on the side at night they'd pick me up at Western at 5 o'clock and I'd go out with them and drive down to Indiana some place around in western Illinois, whether it was legal, and fix their games.
    104:30
    Then they'd bring me home, you know, 4 or 5 in the morning, and my mother's up yelling at me, Where you been? Where you been?
    104:40
    I've been out working, making money. But I learned how to fix pinball machines. I love Gottlieb. He was a good friend of mine.
    104:53
    We became very close, him and I. He was an honest guy. You can't say that about many people today. But he was honest. You know, we made that Challenger.
    105:19
    It was a dog. It was. One day a guy shows up at the factory. He wanted to buy 200 Challengers.
    105:35
    I just happened to be in the outage office at the time. Judd was there. I don't know whether Judd was there or not. Elvin was there. Tony was there. Smith was there. We must have been having a meeting or something. Anyway, the guy shows up. He wants to talk to Dave Gottlieb. And they bring him in. And he's from Northwest Canada.
    106:02
    Where exactly, I'm not sure. But Northwest Canada or something. and he wanted to buy 200 challenges.
    106:11
    And Dave says, you don't want 200 challenges. They're not for the game. They won't make any money. And he says, I know my territory, and I know those games are going to make a lot of money.
    106:25
    Well, Dave tells him, I tell you what, if you'll pay for them, I'll make them. but remember I'm telling you you're going to go broke just remember that he told them several times don't do it but if you want to I'll do it you know I'll pay you the cash for it he paid them we billed them the guy went broke but you know it's very interesting yeah it shows a part of Dave you know yeah yeah integrity he didn't sell he unsold the guy insisted and we were all sitting there just our mouths were hanging open you know we couldn't believe what we were hearing a lot of things crazy things happened at Gottlieb let me tell you there's a million stories I could tell you but you know They've got to come to me slowly.
    107:35
    Well, does anything come to you about David Gottlieb? Any other stories right off the top of your head there?
    107:44
    Well, yeah. I can think of another one. I can think of a lot of them. But just off the top of my head right now, we made a game called Speedball App.
    107:59
    You ever hear of it? No. You heard of Evans? Yes. They made a game called Ten Strike. Yes. That's that bowling game. Yep, with the mannequin. At the mannequin.
    108:16
    Well, Harry Mabbs got the bright idea of making a skee-ball game with his mannequin. Okay. so the man could throw the ball go up a little incline and drop into a hole and it could drop into the center hole which is the big score or miss the center hole go to the next one and make a different score and so on like a bullseye and so it was beautiful the idea was fantastic and they made thousands and thousands of the 10th strike. That was a very popular game.
    109:01
    So Harry makes his game, see? And everybody loved it. This is a winner for sure. Evans come over. He wanted to buy the game from Dave. Dave would sell it to him.
    109:19
    So Dave opens up a new plant down on 22nd Street in Chicago. and he sent some of us guys down, and I was one of them.
    109:31
    I went down there, and we built this game. Well, we must have made, oh, I don't know, a hundred, maybe.
    109:40
    Everyone came back. It was a flop. Absolute flop. And the problem was, and we didn't realize it, And nobody realized it was that either it was so accurate that it would drop in the center pocket every time, or you couldn't put it in the pocket every time. It would just be any place, you know, and there was no fun. Yeah. You had no control over it. Huh. Anyway, it was an absolute flop. Well, in the meantime, Dave had bought plywood that was covered with a, well, what kind of covering was on it? I can't think of the name of the covering. Formica. Formica covered the sides. So he bought these things in sheets, like four-by-eight-foot sheets or something. all this before Mike got it. And then he went to the cabinet company and they made cabinets and we had these darn cabinets coming out of our ears. So then when it became a flop and they had it closed up and they got all the games back again, we had all this lumber left over.
    111:02
    He takes the lumber home and he handled his basement recreation room with his paneling. all around the room and she said I sat there in my rec room and look at that family they taught me a lesson to be more careful how I spend my money and look at a game more carefully and we all laughed about it in the paneled basement that's really funny in the back of Dave's city they're looking at that paneled wall just scowling just thinking of all the money he lost and what that cost him that wall yeah a lot of crazy things happened to us we enjoyed it now Harry Mabbs designed a game called Bowlette and it's the only puck bowler that Godley made as far as I know do you remember anything about that particular game no I know that I remember the name.
    112:13
    It was about the size of a pinball cabinet. It was very unusual. It was very interesting. Oh, yeah. Oh, I remember that. Now it comes back to me.
    112:29
    That game, we ran her in the shop like a record pinball machine. And it was so complicated with all those switches.
    112:44
    We had nothing but trouble. And in the shop, our crew, they couldn't handle it. You know, it was too complicated for our crew. and when we were running across the bullring,
    113:12
    all us engineers were working on the line. We worked at the final area shooting trouble. The electrical guys, not the mechanical guys, but myself and two or three other guys worked on the line as long as that game was being built because they couldn't handle it. And after that, after that game was over, I came up with the idea that we had to teach our testers, we had to train them better. We had to teach them electricity, circuitry.
    113:54
    Global shooting. And that kind of stuff. So I started a little school, and I had it one night a week for a couple hours after work. And I got textbooks and one thing or another and a blackboard, and I had all the testers. And anyone who wanted to become a tester in the shop, come to the class. and I taught troubleshooting after work one night a week. And it paid off.
    114:32
    It paid dividends. It really did. At first, some of the guys scoffed at it, but I said, you know, it's going to work. You just wait and see because they're in a different environment. but they're in a classroom environment.
    114:52
    I brought them into the lunchroom. We sat down, and I got a blackboard, and I got a textbook that taught basic electricity. And then I worked circuitry into it. And I ran it for, I don't know, a year or two, and it really worked well for us.
    115:13
    I enjoyed doing it, and the guys enjoyed it too. and they had fun doing it and they got paid for it. They really liked it.
    115:23
    Yeah, it's the best of all worlds there. They got an extra hour to pay every week and overtime, so they made a pretty good job. But they learned and it helped because I could see the trouble when we were building that game that it was too complicated. the circuit all those switches and the circuitry to make it work it was tough it was a good circuit that's the kind of circuit I enjoyed you know complex one that I enjoyed working on so do you remember if that was a commercial success the bullet no it wasn't Well, it wasn't a flop.
    116:15
    You know, it was just a game. It was okay. I got you. Yeah, it was okay. We ran a run. I don't know. I could probably look up how many we made. It's really unimportant at this time. But I got a list of all the games and how many we made, so I could look it up. Wow. But they ran it. But, you know, there was a time when we all made bumper pool. Remember bumper pool? Yeah.
    116:49
    Of course, we got in on it, too. Every company got in on bumper pool. And we got involved in it, too. I don't think we made any money on it because by the time we had to set up a separate factory and took people out of our factory, you know, it hurt us. in a way.
    117:14
    And the competition on the bumper pool was unbelievable. Every company made them. They were easy to make.
    117:24
    There's nothing to them. Do you remember about what year that might have been? Gosh, I can't remember now.
    117:37
    That's okay. I wasn't aware that had gotten into that bumper pool business. So that's very interesting. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we made them.
    117:49
    Yeah, but we got into it late, and that wasn't good either. We went in, we hesitated too long. It just wasn't good for us. We should have stayed with what we had, you know.
    118:04
    Stick with success, huh? Yeah. You do what you know best Yeah And we knew pinball machines You went through quite a lot of different gimmicks You know, gameplay gimmicks Or come-ons As I've heard you call them before At your time there at Gottlieb There was a double award feature Oh yeah That was kind of a silly thing, you know nobody liked it oh yeah nobody liked it you know I had a hard time selling it really I told them you know it don't cost us anything it was different if you could put it on a glass and it say double award you got it made you know it don't cost nothing pennies you know IP sounded good and we used it several times I don't know maybe half a dozen games. Yeah. And it was well liked. People did use it, you know. And operators would tell us, yeah, it's good. That's not wrong. That's fun. Players like it. So I'd put it on there just for the heck of it, you know. And I didn't think they'd ever use it. Huh. But when I had it on the game and I played it, you know, I say, you know, this is fun. I could double, you know. Yeah. That's fantastic.
    119:45
    Yeah, it's a silly little thing. But the pin game is a silly thing. Yeah, it's a fun way to spend a nickel or two.
    119:58
    It's just, I don't know, it's just a fun thing. And it's just a little more fun to it. and an extra nickel added a little fun to it. Yep. You win one game, you know, and you say, oh, next game I'll kill it. You put in two nickels and, of course, you blow it. That's my experience. But that was the fun of it, you know. Yeah. That was fun. Absolutely.
    120:30
    Yeah. You know, technology is a strange thing, you know. People, the way they think, you've got to out-think people to get a nickel out of them. Yeah, that must have been a continuous challenge. I tell you know a pin game is a fun thing to play and I've always felt it if somebody's fun with it it's wonderful and still today I'm giving fun to an awful lot of people because I have people from all over the world I talk to they all love these games yes pinball is kind of a universal and it's amazing to me that even though cultural sensibilities and tastes have changed over the years stepping up to a game that was designed in 1956 or you know even earlier you can have a tremendous amount of fun even today so that's a testament to just how solid the designs that you came up with were.
    121:53
    You know, here, we go out to breakfast once a week, a little group of us here. We go to different restaurants in town, and one of the restaurants, the guy is a pinball nut, you know? And when he called out, I wore one of my pinball shirts one day.
    122:14
    He wanted to get that shirt, the cook. Cook happens to own the place because he comes out to make sure everything is okay he's a real nice guy it's a family type thing where did you get that shirt and I said well I got it when I was working and you make pinball and I said sure I was a designer oh my goodness and now all he does is talk pinball machine when I go to you know it's just he hasn't forgotten of course he's probably 50 years old 65 but he played it sometime back in his youth and it brought back memories to him and he was thrilled that I actually made a game you know yeah I was a designer my goodness is that right oh my oh yeah well It's a rare thing, and you certainly have a unique place in the list, the very small list of designers, based on the number of games that you made and how consistently fun they are as well.
    123:34
    You know, I find your games to be games that I can step up and play over and over again and just have a lot of fun. so was there something in your design philosophy about that? I mean it sounds like you were really interested in giving people an escape giving people something fun to spend their money on was there anything more to it than that? I enjoyed I've told people a lot of times there aren't many people in this world can say they went to work and they had fun most people go to work and it's drudgery it's the same old thing over and over and over but I said you know every morning when I went to work I had fun I look forward to having fun and I had fun building the game and I had fun when I played it and you know you can't just play it you had to play enough games that you had the percentage right you couldn't have a game You couldn build a game where they win three or four games more than they played You had to have somewhere a percentage properly
    124:55
    And so a lot of it I'd have to play it for maybe half a day a day and make sure I got everything pinned right and the circuit right. Maybe I made it too easy. Maybe I had to change one of the rubbers around a little bit, you know, whatever. Sometimes it was easy. Sometimes it fell together. Nothing. I had nothing. But sometimes I had to fight it a little bit. Make a few changes here and there. So, I mean, it must have been just an awful challenge on those games in the 50s where you could win in multiple ways just to get that just right, where you weren't giving away too many games and getting the money in the cash box.
    125:54
    Well, that's very difficult, yeah. Yeah, I would imagine so. You had to balance it out. You had to have a high score that makes the high score interesting, but you also had to have features.
    126:11
    And you had to use the feature. If you had the feature, you had to be able to win it once in a while.
    126:18
    It was kind of tricky to balance and say, now the high score and features would be about even, and I tried to do that pretty much.
    126:31
    So, but over your tenure, things like the VariTarget and the RotoTarget came into existence. What was your favorite feature to put in a game?
    126:47
    I think the RotoTarget was my favorite feature. I used it more than I think in anything else. that thing at first didn't spin it just stepped and then I think Doc came up with a spin and that I liked very much it's very eye catching and it flashed it was exciting It gives the player a little shot, you know. And I like the road to target. I've made a lot of games on road to target. My goodness.
    127:33
    It's an awful lot. It's a very fun feature. Yeah. Do you remember the game Harry Mavs made with the turret shooter? Yes. Buffalo Bill was one. There were a couple other ones. I think he made four, I think. Was it just 21?
    127:57
    Just 21, I think was the first one. Okay. But anyway, on about the fourth game, it just flopped. Huh. They wouldn't play it. Nobody would play it. And we had the fifth game. It might have been the fourth game, but I think it was the fifth game.
    128:23
    It was a sensational game. We all loved to play it. When we liked to play it, it had to be a pretty good game. When the engineering department would go over and play a game on it, it had to be pretty good. And that was a good game. And we were all disappointed when we had stopped building them because the distributors just wouldn't buy them.
    128:49
    But Harry came up with that, and it was... Harry was a good idea man. He was a funny guy, too, you know.
    129:01
    Let me tell you a little bit about Harry. Yeah, please do. You want to hear it? Oh, yeah. Harry was in the Navy he was a Navy man and he was in the Navy for quite a few years and he'd come out of the Navy and he got into the pinball business eventually but first of all he was working for an electric company in Miami, Florida and he got a job of putting in transformers to run lance over a boxing match over a ring and so he builds these transformers and he put them underneath the ring and he had it set under the ring and a fight was going on over his head and he says all I could hear was a hitting and a swearing and he says all I could hear and I never saw a force to hear Harry tell us you know it was just a riot because he was a fun guy. Yeah. A lot of funny stories.
    130:13
    He was really something. So I looked up the turret shooter games, and I found one called Ricochet, which was made in 1954.
    130:27
    Yeah. And that was many years after the other ones, and your name is actually ascribed to this one. Well, that wasn't a turret name, though, I don't think. Okay.
    130:40
    I think we just used the name. Oh, okay. But I don't remember making that name. I don't remember that name. Oh, yeah, I found a promotional photo, and it does have a turret down at the bottom.
    130:57
    It does have a turret. Well, then I didn't make it. Okay. My name is not, it's done by mistake. I never made a turret game. Harry Mavis made all the turret games. Gotcha. Okay.
    131:16
    What did you think? I think she was the best game that we made with that turret, as I remember back.
    131:27
    It's got an archery theme. Better than all the games. Yeah. Boy, when was that, Dave? What year? It says 1954.
    131:40
    54? Holy heck. Which was four years after Buffalo Bill. 60 years. Or 60 years ago. My goodness. Yeah.
    131:59
    It's a long time. Oh, goodness. So were there other games, games by other designers that got leaped that you really liked, aside from Spirit of 76?
    132:16
    Oh, I don't think there's any game I don't like. Man after my own heart. That's good. Worth getting rid of. When Krensky was building games, they had to get past me, you know. And so I liked every one that he made that, you know, if I didn't like it, he knew it, you know, and he'd do something about it. But he had to go through me, and I had certain likes and dislikes. Now, did he come from Keeney?
    132:49
    Yeah. Okay. And was that after Keeney had closed out for her? No, I think they were still in business, but I don't know why he left there. Maybe they laid him off. I don't remember. Because I didn't hire him. Oh, okay. Bob hired him, so I didn't have a chance to look at his resume or anything. And I don't think they ever discussed it.
    133:15
    So I found an interesting fact about Ed Krinsky. He apparently was the bingo designer at Keeney. Yeah, I think he was. Does that surprise you? He designed amusement games at Keeney. Mm-hmm. He didn't. He was strictly in the gambling area. But he fell into a gauntlet mode, you know, real easy.
    133:45
    Of course, Kretzky was a pretty sharp guy, you know. Yeah. Hmm. He was a bright guy, and he knew what we wanted, and he went in. And it was great for me when he came in, because I was getting burned out, I think. I don't know. But what it did for me was to get me out of the room. I got out into the factory and into the other areas of the company, and I enjoyed that.
    134:29
    You were there during the transition from wood legs to metal legs and wood rails to metal rails. Oh, yeah. What did you think about that? Oh, fantastic.
    134:44
    You know, we built a better product for less money. Less money. Those legs cost us a fortune. Yeah. And those wood rails, unbelievable.
    135:02
    You know, you think you put stainless steel on there, it costs you money. It saved us money. Wow. Yeah. And was there any thought to the operator? Was there any request for that from the operators? No, no, no. They just accepted it. We touted it as being better. You know,
    135:24
    don't burn. Cigarettes are going to burn your moldings. Right. And it's harder to drill into the game or anything of that nature, right? Well, that's right. That's all selling points we used, you know.
    135:41
    We made money on it. Yeah. It all works out. You wouldn't think so. You wouldn't think you could do that. Yeah. But wood was expensive. Wow. Those legs cost a lot of money.
    135:59
    And the middle legs, we made them. We punched them out. We formed them. Stamped them at the factory, huh? At the factory, yeah. Wow.
    136:09
    Now, would you have separate factories or separate areas for doing the metalwork? Or would you have vendors for most of the metalwork?
    136:20
    Well, we always had it in one corner. Now, when we went to Lake Street, when we moved out to Lake Street, we built the factory in, I think, three sections. The first section, which was a building in itself, was a punch press and a dye shop. It was all in one building. Then we had an open, the next factory, the next open. So in that sense it was a separate building, but when we were on Linus Street and Costner, it was, I'd say, almost a part of the assembly area.
    137:19
    It was open. Okay. And when you became chief engineer, would you have to keep track of all the vendors for a particular game?
    137:33
    Like all the parts and getting all that prepared for the factory to assemble? Oh, no, no. We had a person agent.
    137:43
    Oh, we had a lot of help to do that. I wouldn't have anything to do with it. The first thing that happened after the game was ready to be built, we had a man that went over the game and made a parts list. Every screw, every nut, bolt, switch, blade was listed. Then they went to the purchasing department and they ordered the parts. they count up how many switch blades is an example of what thickness and order and material for that. That's a big job. Yeah. That's a major job. I'm seeing that now. Yes. Especially when you're building a game every minute and a half, you know. Yeah, yeah. that purchasing department had to be on top of their stuff too oh yeah that was a big fact we had a purchasing department actually it was two men and one woman I think or maybe there were two women a woman and a half maybe whatever you know, but it took about people to keep up on that
    139:16
    Which is surprising because that's an awful lot of work. Yeah, they must have been very efficient Yeah, we had a pretty good pretty good arrangement going there. We had a good purchasing agent
    139:31
    So, we had two purchasing agents. They were both good guys So after the game is designed, someone comes and makes the bill of materials, and then submits that to the purchasing department, and then they would order enough for a run of a title? Well, that's basically what it is, but it wasn't quite that simple. Okay. No, enough. It went from the design stage into the engineering room and they engineered it. They would change things, you know, but it wouldn't change the game. I watched it like a hawk.
    140:20
    They could change, well, if I could think of something, I don't know what. But for some reason they might make a minor change in it, but they wouldn't make very many changes. I wouldn't allow it. I kept my eye on them. You know, it's a long process from the time that they would take it out of my room to actually go into production was probably six, seven months. Wow.
    140:57
    And all that time, previous games that you had designed would be rolling off the line, right? They have to build the game, draw the circuit,
    141:15
    make a sample game, play it again, check percentages. There was a lot to it. After it left my room there was still a lot of work to do. And it took about seven months, eight months. Sometimes we got down close when I finally built Paul Bunyan. That was the last game I designed.
    141:51
    And what do you think of that one? Well, you know, I said when I... I was chief engineer at the time.
    141:59
    I was doing it as a... I was running in and out of the room and building this at the same time, you know. Wow. And I got through it and I said, you know, I'll never build another game. You can't force me into it because I'll never do it. anyone who builds a game this way they don't deserve to be a designer I can't design anymore that thing is so bad but actually it wasn't that bad a game now I look back at it and we sold quite a few we sold over 3,000 so it wasn't that bad a game but I was disappointed in it It wasn't up to my standard. I have to admit that. I couldn't do it.
    142:55
    It's just one of those things. Yeah, so it sounds like you couldn't devote your full attention to it, so it kind of suffered for that is what you thought about it at the time. Yeah, I'd run in and out of the office and out of the room and take other things. and my mind wasn't on what I was doing, and I didn't like that at all.
    143:16
    It was roughly the wrong way. Right. So you've mentioned before light box fixtures and making test rigs for them.
    143:33
    What does that entail exactly? Making what? Making light box test fixtures? Oh, test fixtures. Yeah. Oh.
    143:44
    Well, you know, every game I went out, that was my job for several months or a year maybe, maybe more than a year. Every game that came by, I had to make the test fixtures, three test fixtures for the light box and three test fixtures for the bottom panel.
    144:03
    And then when I got through with them, I had nothing to do until the next game came along. So the faster I could build my test fixtures, the more time I had to loaf around and do nothing.
    144:17
    And I'm not a guy that lays around and does nothing. Yeah, I get that impression. That's why I build college days.
    144:27
    I started it, you know, and I worked on it for one, two, three days, maybe a week. And then a new game would come along and I have to build my test fixtures. so I'd go back and build test fixtures.
    144:42
    And then I said when I get done, I'd hurry up. I had a plan. I had a way of doing them, making them quick.
    144:50
    I had kind of a system for it, made it quick. And I had more time to work on my game. And I finally got it done, and everybody liked it. Dave liked it. He really liked it. and it was a pretty good game, College Days. I've never seen one, but I hope to one day.
    145:13
    Yeah, it was a good game. I called it College Days, D-A-Y-S, and Parker changed it to D-A-Z-E. Yeah.
    145:24
    And, you know, it was a little humor, and, yeah, that's a great part. You know, that's great. I like that. so but then I the next game and working the same way working my touch fixtures and building the game and I did three games that way wow you're a busy guy very busy guy I said you were a busy guy well I kept busy you know I didn't loaf around and convince around all the girls out in the shop not too many times.
    146:08
    When I was designing, I used to do that. I used to go out and talk to all the girls and the guys, you know. I got to know them all and I kind of became a father confessor to a lot of them. They were young people, you know. I wasn't old. I was a married guy, you know. Yeah. They all got a kick out of me coming out and talking with them. They loved that. It was a release for me to do that. Yeah. I really appreciate it. One guy particularly, he came to me afterwards and said, I've got to talk to you. He had problems. I was kind of a father confessor by this time. I was getting old enough that these young guys would have problems. They come to me.
    147:26
    But I never lost around. In all my days, I worked eight hours or more. And I worked and I never moved off. Never. I'm so sorry for keeping you up so late. Thank you for doing this. That's right, Nick. You know, I love the name Nicholas. I'm fond of it, too.
    147:52
    My dad's name was Nicholas. Oh, really? And if I'd had another son, I would have called him Nicholas. Wow.
    148:02
    But my first son I called Andrew because of another man I knew who I respected. one thing or another and I said the next boy is going to be Nicholas but I never had another boy I had two girls so I never got the name used I never used the name but Nicholas has always been a name that I've been fond of well thank you so when your name was Nicholas I was Nicky my dad was Nick Well, thank you very much Wayne, I just really appreciate you taking your entire night talking with me I can't believe you did this It's such a gift to me and to everybody All right, if you call me up sometime We'll just have a bowl session and whatever Yeah, absolutely A week after that conversation I caught up with Wayne Nines again And asked him just a couple supplemental questions Here they are Starting with one about Linda Rant and his experience with the man. He was a great guy, and unfortunately he didn't live too long, but when he was in business, he built a great company. And I tell you, he was very generous.
    149:32
    I think here's an old story I could tell you, I think. You know, the crime machine industry had an association. They had a crime machine association, and they wanted to do something to, you know, help humanity and whatever, you know. And so they decided to take money from these different companies and have a fund and give money away. So they decided to give money to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. Okay. I don't know who Damon Runyon is. I don't, actually.
    150:18
    You don't know? No. He was a Broadway producer, an author. He was a Broadway showman, what he was. Okay. Very popular in those days. And he put on movies and plays and so forth. And so we, the Climbing Machine Association decided to put up this money for cancer in his name.
    150:59
    And so they had a luncheon, a dinner, and we all went to the dinner, of course. and all these manufacturers got up and I give $10,000 to Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. The next guy would get up and I'd give $10,000.
    151:19
    And come in the ranch turn, he gets up and he hands out a check. And I give $50,000 to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. Everybody almost fell over.
    151:33
    All these guys were giving $10,000. And he gives $50,000 a day when you get kids. Wow. What a guy, you know, what a guy. Yeah. And he floored everybody. The place became silent. It was unbelievable.
    151:55
    He was a great guy. Did you ever get a chance to analyze any of the United bingos that Linda ran? No, I don't remember. for ever having seen a United bingo. Gotcha, gotcha. I don't think I did. I could have forgotten, but I don't think we ever got one in. We always got belly bingos in. Got it. Yeah, that sparked my curiosity because I knew that you had known him at Western, so I was just curious if you kind of followed his engineering career a little bit.
    152:32
    But yeah. And then I read something the other day that there was a court case between Gottlieb and Valley, and something in it said that you were called to testify. Is that true?
    152:49
    Oh, yeah. That is true. It was down in New Orleans. Oh, yeah? And I tell you, that was something. because I was very familiar with the Valley Ping of them. Fortunately, you know, I had a Tom Pretty patent, and Valley decided they wanted to have a test case,
    153:14
    and they let the government know they were shipping this game, and then after the government picked it up, and there was a big lawsuit, and the government called me in to testify, you know.
    153:34
    And I spent, I don't know, a day on the stand or more. I don't know. It was a long time. Wow. And when I got through and I'm home, I told Dave, I said, you know, you can do what you want to do, but I'll never testify against anybody at any time or anywhere and I never did before that I was going to court quite often oh really for different things you know I can tell you another little story if you want another story sure yeah it is a good one and I think it was in New York State now let me think It wasn't Albany, but it was in New York State.
    154:26
    And a guy had a game in a tavern, and instead of using a knockoff button to pay out, you know how they paid off. Yeah, yeah. Do you know that? Yep. Well, in this place here, they didn't want to pay off because the law was very strict and the cops were watching it too closely, which the operator did.
    154:56
    Well, I'll go at it another way. They had this game in this tavern, and the police came along and confiscated it and hauled it off to this law office. and then this operator and the owner of the tavern were arrested and the trial was just coming up.
    155:27
    Now, the government, they needed an expert witness. So first, I'm sitting at my drawing board one day, drawing a circuit or whatever I was drawing, and my phone rings and the girl says, there's two guys out there who want to talk to you.
    155:46
    And they talk to me. I go out there and they serve me with a subpoena to show up at this trial, you know.
    155:58
    So I was floored. But anyway, I go to Dave and Dave says, well, you got a subpoena, you got to go. So he gives me the money and I fly out to wherever this was, you know. and I get off the airplane. It's late at night. It's about, I don't know, 10, 11 o'clock at night, and these two lawyers meet me at the plane, and they say, oh, we're glad to see you. You know, you've got to come up there and take a look at this game because it won't pay out.
    156:33
    We push the button and nothing happens, you know. So I go up to the office, and they open up the game and take a look at it, Here what they did was the two wires that you would normally close with a switch on the bottom,
    156:49
    they took the wires off and soldered wires on there, and they put a little hole in the back of the machine, and they put these wires through that hole, went down through the floor, under the basement, and up into the bar area. Wow. So the guys would win five, ten games, and they'd want their money, and they'd go to the barkeep, and he'd just press the button and give them their 50 cents or whatever it was.
    157:22
    So these two wires were ripped out of the wall. When they hauled the machine away, the police, they didn't know. They just had the machine that went out the door with them. Well, the wires broke off. Yeah. And they were hanging, one half in the cabinet, one was hanging out the back.
    157:44
    So I told these lawyers, here's what happened. And I explained it to them. And they said, oh, thank God, you know, we could go to court tomorrow and be fairly safe.
    157:58
    So we go to court the next day, and Rufus King, our lawyer, came. He wanted to be there to protect me, you know. So Rufus came in and he brought his wife with him. And so him and his wife were in Iowa City in the courtroom waiting for the trial to start.
    158:22
    And Rufus says to him, Wayne, if you cut that old lawyer who was a rough old guy, he was mean looking, he'd always stop. He said, if you cut that mean old judge, take him down and put his head inside that cabinet. I'll buy you a bottle of liquor so he said ok Rufus you got a deal anyway I have a few people testify and I finally get called and I'm on the end and they're giving me a hard time you know and I'm thinking of this Rufus and I looked down the audience and his wife is gone but disappeared and I said, well, you know, she's probably sick or something. But anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Anyway, I say to the judge, I look at him, I say, if you come down here, I think I can show you exactly what you're talking about.
    159:27
    He gets up off of that bench and he comes stomping down there I get off the stand and go down. He puts his head on one side and I put my head on the other side. And he says to me, what the hell is going on here?
    159:44
    So, you know, and then him and I are talking just like you and I are talking. Right. Just not legal or anything. We're, you know, no questions. We're just, and I just explain what happened. You know, this is what happened. and you push the button and it takes it off. They just pulled the wires off the button and ran them out of the back of the machine, and there the wires are, and I showed them to them, you know, and I said that's what they did in August, and they really let the pay off. No question about it, you know. So the judge said, oh, boy, thanks a lot. He said, I appreciate this. And so I go back and get on the stand, and the judge gets back on his decision. And the trial goes on, and so I'm still after these defense lawyers. So then I look out over the audience. Rufus's wife is coming in. She's got a brown sack. You know, she's holding up a bottle of liquor.
    160:48
    She held it up so that I could see it. I couldn't help but laugh. Anyway, of course, the case was over. It was done and finished. It was open and smooth. I achieved it. But, you know, it's one of those funny things that happen in life.
    161:11
    I always had a lot of fun. Yeah. I've argued so many things. I don't know why. I always did. I did. so you were called fairly frequently to testify then up until the valley yeah I testified oh I don't know how many times I guess 3, 4, 5, 6 times I don't remember a lot of times anyway wow most of them were little cases on small courts but the one in New Orleans that was serious these lawyers were all out of New York City they were smart guys they worked me over pretty good you know and in fact my lawyer says to me when you go out to lunch be careful and I said okay I'll be careful and when I went home I was careful They were a fool. This was serious business, Tom.
    162:23
    So that's why when I got back to Gottlieb, I told them no more. I'm not testifying no more on anything.
    162:32
    He was getting too serious. Stakes got really high on that last one, huh? Yeah. Yeah, that was... those guys were too powerful for me. That was big-time stuff. The one in Rochester or wherever it was up there in New York, it was small-time stuff, which was okay. I don't mind that. But when you get involved with big money, big people were involved in this one,
    163:09
    and I thought I was out of my league. I didn't want that kind of stuff. I was a pinball designer. I wasn't known at that time. I didn't want to go to courts.
    163:22
    But the industry was rough. It was a rough business at one time. Yeah. Sounds like it. Colorful would be a good word to describe it.
    163:35
    It was a colorful industry. A lot of things happen. You know, I'd forgotten all about this trial thing, and I would have probably mentioned it the other night. But, you know, there are a lot of things that are still in the back of my mind someplace that are working around.
    164:00
    They come out sometime next. Yeah, just waiting to surface at some point. Is there anything about that trial that you can tell me about?
    164:14
    Because I don't really know much about the facts of the case or anything really. Well, I don't want to go into all that stuff again.
    164:27
    I've forgotten most of it. But you know what a bingo game is like. It's complex. These darn lawyers, they can twist things around pretty good. Something happened, I can't recall now what it was. They thought they had me cornered on something. I don't remember now. It may come back to me, but I really caught them on something. I forget what it was.
    165:08
    I stuck up to them, as they would say. I can't recall exactly what that was. I don't know. I've forgotten.
    165:23
    But it was a rough case. And my lawyer warned me to be careful, you know, and that was enough. That taught me to get out of that stuff. I'm not testifying no more. Gotcha. I'd like to thank Wayne Nines for coming on the show and spending so much time talking with me and discussing the ins and outs of his pinball career. And thank you very much for listening. My name again is Nick Baldridge. you can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com, or you can call me on the bingos line. That's 724-BINGOS-1, 724-246-4671. You can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, via RSS, on Facebook, on Twitter, at bingopodcast. You can follow me on Instagram, also at bingopodcast. Or you can listen to us on our website, which is 4amusementonly.libsyn.com. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.