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Jim Patla

Pintastic New England·video·1h 13m·analyzed·Aug 30, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Jim Patla reflects on 50+ years in pinball: Bally culture, design mentorship, CAD innovation, and engineering discipline.

Summary

Jim Patla, a legendary pinball designer with 50+ years in the industry, discusses his career spanning Bally (1965–1988), Williams/Midway (1988–2000), and other manufacturers. He recounts early play-testing at Bally under Ted Zale, his transition into design and engineering, the introduction of CAD technology at Williams, and key cultural practices like test marketing and design-for-manufacturing discipline. The interview covers his influential games, design philosophy, and the evolution of pinball engineering standards.

Key Claims

  • Jim Patla started at Bally in 1965 as a sophomore in high school, playing and testing games after school under Ted Zale.

    high confidence · Jim Patla directly states this in the opening of the interview.

  • Pac-Man killed interest in pinball; the manufacturing line was running almost 24/7 before the video game boom.

    high confidence · Jim Patla describes the industry transition around 1982 when Bally merged its pinball group with Midway.

  • Bally moved the pinball division to Midway's building around 1982, and pinball was downsized as Bally focused on slot machines and fitness equipment.

    high confidence · Jim Patla recounts the organizational changes after the Pac-Man era.

  • Harry Williams purchased the Bally Pinball Division in August 1988.

    high confidence · Jim Patla states he was director of engineering in 1986 and left in August 1988 when Williams bought the division.

  • Jim Patla and Steve Ritchie worked together after Williams acquired the Bally Pinball Division; there was a proposal to make Bally games incompatible with Williams components, which was ultimately abandoned.

    high confidence · Steve Ritchie (present in the interview) and Jim Patla discuss this post-acquisition period.

  • Bally games used solid copper wire as jumpers on stand-up targets, which broke due to vibration; the wire spool was labeled 'do not use in environments with vibration.'

    high confidence · Jim Patla and an unnamed speaker detail a quality issue with jumper wires and mention talking to 'Ernie' on the production line.

  • Jim Patla introduced CAD technology (initially from Digital Equipment Corp. VAX stations, not AutoCAD) at Williams, with the first digitally designed game being Next Generation.

    high confidence · Jim Patla confirms bringing CAD to Williams after starting at Bally; mentions 'Next Generation' as the first digital design.

  • Ted Zale used a magnetic board with sheet magnets to plan playfield layouts, achieving precision to 1/64th of an inch.

Notable Quotes

  • “Anybody could have an idea. Anybody was allowed to go into the president's office and say, I have an idea. I think we should do this. And everybody got a chance once. If your idea was good, then you got more chances. But everybody got a chance to fail once.”

    Jim Patla@ 2:56 — Core philosophy of Bally's culture and innovation approach; foundational to the company's success.

  • “Nobody has a magic measuring stick for what is going to be fun. Everybody has an idea of what fun is.”

    Jim Patla@ 3:10 — Design philosophy underlying Bally's willingness to take risks and test games.

  • “Pac-Man basically killed the interest in pinball. I mean, it was just ridiculous what we were doing on the line as far as manufacturing them. Almost 24-7, the line was running.”

    Jim Patla@ 4:31 — Describes the dramatic market shift that ended the pinball boom era.

  • “Can I have a drink? Can I have another drink? ... right there in the headline Bally sells pinball division”

    Jim Patla@ 12:15 — Anecdote about learning of the sale to Harry Williams while returning from Italy; illustrates surprise personnel announcement.

  • “Ted Zale was always thinking outside the box. And his designs, you know, back in the early days, games were always symmetrical. Ted's games were not.”

    Jim Patla@ 23:23 — Describes Ted Zale's design philosophy and influence on industry innovation.

  • “Full text search is a wonderful thing.”

    Jim Patla@ 18:03 — Reflects on the value of CAD and document control systems in reducing design redundancy.

Entities

Jim PatlapersonTed ZalepersonSteve RitchiepersonSteve KordekpersonIrv GrablepersonBally

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Post-acquisition (1988), Harry Williams and Bally pinball groups had incompatible component standards; proposed total separation of Bally games from Williams components was abandoned as impractical.

    high · Steve Ritchie: 'they wanted to do was make Bally games be their own Valley games. They couldn't use any components from Harry Williams... It was a dumb idea, just super dumb. We didn't end up doing it.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Bally's organizational transformation in 1982–1988: pinball group merged with Midway, then downsized as company pivoted to electronic slot machines and fitness equipment (Life Fitness).

    high · Jim Patla: 'around 82 they merged the pinball group with Midway manufacturing... then there was the life, Bally Life Fitness, they got into the fitness equipment... I was out of pinball around when we moved over to Midway.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Pac-Man caused dramatic industry downturn; Bally shifted focus from pinball to slot machines and fitness equipment, leading to pinball division downsizing around 1982.

    high · Jim Patla: 'Pac-Man basically killed the interest in pinball... Almost 24-7, the line was running' before the transition; 'they merged the pinball group with Midway manufacturing... people that were working in that facility went over to gaming because Bally was starting to get heavier into the slot machine.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Bally had structured test marketing locations (e.g., New Orleans airport) with extended evaluation periods; real failures were allowed to cancel release (e.g., Tee'd Off, Red Max, Joker).

    high · Jim Patla: 'test marketing, there was a lot of leverage given Tee'd Off the airport New Orleans. Lewis Boldenburg... [Fireball] did really well... first week, $60. Second week, $45... Fourth week, time to rotate it.'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.221

0:00
Thank you for watching. We have a guy who's been in pinball for over 50 years. I've been in pinball for over 50 years, but I just, you know, playing early and operated for a while. And I guess when you started playing pretty soon, you were playing as an entry into game development, right? Right. To learn how to exercise those games that Ted Zale was designing? Yeah. I basically, I mean, I'm Jim Patlin, just to make an introduction here. And I started at Belly. I started at Belly in 1965. And I was a sophomore in high school. and three hours a day after school I'd go play pinball at Belly and get paid for it. So it was a rough life.
1:32
Things were obviously different there, like mechanical games. Record keeping was pen and paper. So when we played the games, we wrote down the scores, how many specials, how many extra balls, how long the game play was. and Ted Zale was the drill sergeant and he made sure everything was exactly the way he wanted it. So the three-ball game was one and a half minutes and the five-ball game was two and a half minutes and that was it.
2:05
And so it was a real learning experience. I think that I'm really proud of Belly as a company because when you look back at that company, there's a lot of people who are still in the industry that got their education there. And we had quality control programs in place then that people are lean manufacturing and so forth. they were doing in the 60s. And people are still trying to do it now. And that was just their culture because anybody could have an idea. Anybody was allowed to go into the president's office and say, I have an idea. I think we should do this. And everybody got a chance once.

medium confidence · Jim Patla confirms this practice; notes Ted worked from 1962–1963 onward.

  • Odds and Evens was tested for a full year before release; the test version used expandable foam playfields that deteriorated without UV inhibitors.

    high confidence · Jim Patla discusses test marketing practices and material experimentation.

  • Fireball's shot feature (arm) was developed within budget constraints and cost guidelines, using existing materials but additional engineering work.

    high confidence · Jim Patla describes the Fireball design process and its influence on later designers like Eugene Jarvis.

  • “There's no flexibility in the cost of the game. They had a number, and we weren't allowed to go over it.”

    Jim Patla@ 28:10 — Describes strict cost discipline in design decisions at Bally.

  • “It would be the kind of game, first week, $60. Second week, $45. Third week, $30. Fourth week, time to rotate it.”

    Jim Patla@ 37:36 — Describes the revenue curve of location games, showing the importance of novelty and test marketing.

  • “I think the way the rules were presented was a little hard to follow.”

    unnamed speaker/interviewer@ 35:19 — Feedback on Tee'd Off design; shows some games had mixed reception.

  • “The colors were spectacular. Yeah, what the game did was awesome. Multiball.”

    unnamed speaker (appears to be Eugene Jarvis context)@ 39:14 — Influence of Fireball on later designers; demonstrates the game's legacy.

    • company
    Harry Williamscompany
    Midwaycompany
    Ted Zaleperson
    Alvin Gottliebcompany
    Greg Kmichperson
    Margeperson
    Elaineperson
    Johnperson
    Hank Rossperson
    Ernieperson
    Ken Fedezdaperson
    Arnold Kamenkowperson
    Lewis Boldenburgperson
    Dick Whiteperson
    Eugene Jarvisperson
    Pintastic New Englandorganization
    Barnyard Brian Hawkinsperson
    Fireballgame
    Four Queensgame
    Centaurgame
  • ?

    design_philosophy: Tee'd Off had rules presentation issues (hard to follow); initially positioned as a golf game but had mixed reception. Described as a 'group project' with art input from multiple team members.

    medium · Interviewer: 'I think the way the rules were presented was a little hard to follow.' Jim Patla: 'it was another group project the art certainly was... some people really wanted a golf game.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Bally enforced strict cost discipline on game design; designers had fixed budgets with no flexibility unless justified by exceptional circumstances ('act of God').

    high · Jim Patla: 'There was no flexibility in the cost of the game. They had a number, and we weren't allowed to go over it. I mean, there was no plead your case... it took the act of God, something really special to get something to move.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Ted Zale used magnetic board with sheet magnets for playfield layout planning, achieving 1/64th inch precision; Bally's approach was to test designs at actual locations before full production.

    high · Jim Patla: 'Ted... would throw magnets on a magnetic board... he would actually try to get very precise down to the 64th of an inch on the magnet board. He had grids.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jim Patla transitioned from Bally (1965–1988) to Williams/Midway (1986–1988 director of engineering), then left when Harry Williams acquired the pinball division in August 1988.

    high · Jim Patla: 'I became director of engineering in 86. I was there until August of 88 when Harry Williams bought the Bally Pinball Division.'

  • ?

    announcement: Fireball featured an innovative arm/spinner mechanic developed within cost constraints; became commercially successful after Playboy magazine feature (December 1972).

    high · Jim Patla: 'Fireball was developed within the cost guidelines... Fireball took off after it was the Playboy magazine December 72.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Odds and Evens test version used expandable foam playfields for artwork adhesion, but deteriorated without UV inhibitors and became brittle without protection from harsh sunlight.

    high · Jim Patla: 'we were playing around with expandable foam playfields... the artwork adhered to them and lasted forever... but what was bad in this had that we again learning from mistakes without UV inhibitors all the what would be the bare wood areas would turn dark green... they also became riddle they became brittle and sections would break off.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Bally games used solid copper wire as jumpers on stand-up targets after acquisition, causing breaks due to vibration; spool was labeled 'do not use in environments with vibration.' Issue affected Truck Stop and later Williams games.

    high · Jim Patla and unnamed speaker: 'they're using solid wire As jumpers and on the spool of wire here it is, this big spool of wire do not use in environments with a vibration... they changed it on the Bally games and they kept using it on the Harry Williams and then Harry Williams started having the problem.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Introduction of CAD (Digital Equipment Corp. VAX stations, later AutoCAD) at Williams/Midway replaced hand-drawn engineering drawings; first digital game was Next Generation.

    high · Jim Patla: 'I brought in... it wasn't AutoCAD, but we started CAD at Valley before we moved over... The first game I did digitally was Next Generation.'

    • 3:02
    If your idea was good, then you got more chances. But everybody got a chance to fail once, and that was just the way they were. Because nobody has a magic measuring stick for what is going to be fun. Everybody has an idea of what fun is. Everybody has an idea of, I'd say people have more of an opinion of what they don't like than what they do like.
    3:27
    And so it was always his philosophy that he would give anybody a chance. And I think that that created a team in that company that lived on for a very long time. So anyhow, that's just my sentimental portion of me.
    3:47
    And I know we have a lot of interest in the 60s, the 70s, the era when you were a designer. But to make sure we have enough background for people, I did want to ask a little bit about, you got out of design around 1981. You would do a couple of rush projects and stuff, but then you were doing some important work like standardizing, right, and getting even better engineering practices than already existed?
    4:20
    My last game was Centaur, which, you know, that was the last game. And we were going through, the whole industry was transitioning to video at the time. Pac-Man basically killed the interest in pinball. I mean, it was just ridiculous what we were doing on the line as far as manufacturing them.
    4:44
    Almost 24-7, the line was running. around 82 they merged the pinball group with Midway manufacturing so they moved it to the other building and the other people that were working in that facility went over to gaming because Bellway was starting to get heavier into the slot machine, the new slot machines. Belly had always been in slot machines, but the new electronic slot machines was something they were focusing on. And there was the, shortly after that, then there was the life, Belly Life Fitness, they got into the fitness equipment. But, so I was out of pinball around when we moved over to Midway. They downsized the pinball department and then they put me on special projects. And I worked with Hank Ross to do, you know, like a gun. He always wanted a gun. He was the gun game. Midway co-founded Hank Ross. He was the gun game guy, you know. And so he wanted a new, modernized shooting game. And I never did a gun game before. I mean, the, I guess, where's Steve Ritchie? I've got to wait for him, huh? Not here yet. Yeah, I've got to wait. I'll wait for him for his portion to start. There's another game that gave me a little insight on how to do the, the gun game is called Midnight Marauders. and what I did is I put photo cells up in an artwork piece that detected the beam from the gun. Well, we didn't have infrared. Like now you can use your phone to detect infrared.
    6:51
    And so to try to figure out the beam for the gun, went in a completely dark room, we taped up, and we got as much visible light out of the gun that we could so we could see what we were doing. We did a reflective mirror, and it looked like a 50-inch monitor. And we had people from Japan sticking their head in the game going, where did you get a monitor this big? Because they didn't realize it was nothing more than fancy artwork.
    7:22
    And that was, you know. So that was visible light? It wasn't visible light. No, that was the illumination. We backlit the artwork. The visible light, that was only for us to figure out how to collimate the beam. And it was the best way we could figure out how to collimate the beam, so for accuracy. But anyhow, it's not as steep as I can talk about. Okay. I have to be here to hear you. I know. And I was saying, you know, the video game that, you know, the Midnight Marauders, the shooting game, you know, it was artwork with backward artwork very similar to the artwork in Rapid Fire. Okay. Yeah. Which, you know, I don't know if you ever heard of that game before. I have heard of it, but I don't think I ever played it. Really? Yeah. I don't know, though, yeah. Yeah, I know. It wasn't a pinball machine, right? Well, I heard that Williams copied it and made the Hyperball. No, that's not what happened.
    8:21
    I heard it was called Project Zero. Oh, man. Well, that's why he's here. That's why he's here. So we can talk about that later. Yes, that's a whole story unto itself that's quite humorous.
    8:42
    Okay, but you were, during the mid-'80s, you had work to do, engineering work. Well, then I went back to pinball in 1986. we did TNT, the next trend, and that's when we came up in the last presentation. You saw the different display that we came up with, and that was to do alphanumerics as cheaply as possible.
    9:13
    And so 86 to 88 is when. So this is like special force and strange science? Hard body, strange. Okay. And they say the next trend on the flyer. Yeah. And so that was the, we were trying to redesign the games to put as much into them as possible, but reduce the cost.
    9:44
    And some of the ideas worked very well. Other ideas, not so much. because we did a cabinet that was tapered. And the reason that it was tapered is so we could get more games in a container when we shipped them overseas. Well, we had two different legs. We had longer legs for the back and shorter legs for the front.
    10:07
    And that wasn't the worst part, but the worst part was a pinball carrier didn't work anymore. So you couldn't move them. Like a 60s Williams with a drop front, yeah. You couldn't move them. How many games had that feature?
    10:24
    How many games had that? We probably only did that maybe on the first or second, maybe two. We went back to normal cabinet again.
    10:37
    But I think we could get, I think it was ridiculous how many more games we got in a container. It was a lot. Okay, so I'm drawing this out to get a sense of what was on your plate of things to do at that time. And you were still there when the whole Midway Games got transferred. I became director of engineering in 86.
    11:06
    I was there until August of 88 when Williams bought the Belly Pinball Division. Right, which is like they shuffled business units around to have what they wanted. You wanted to sell off. You transferred.
    11:20
    We were having a global launch of the latest game that we were having there in Venice. And I remember talking to the president of the company and saying, you know, something doesn't feel right here. It doesn't feel right. I want to know if I should go and spend three months in Italy, or do I just go for the time we're going. He goes, what are you talking about? And I said, okay, tell me you don't know. And so my wife has his family there, so after the show in Venice, we went and visited her family. We were there for three weeks. Get back on the airplane to come back to the States, and the first thing I see is a little mini headline on the front page of the paper.
    12:09
    I said, can I have a drink? Can I have another drink? my wife sitting on the other side what's going on? Nothing and right there in the headline ballet sells pinball division it's like okay so that was another interesting surprise and then Steve and I got to work together it wasn't bad I don't have bad memories do you? no not at all I just remember this I don't want to horn in but I'm involved in your... I don't have to be. I could leave, but I just want to share this because there's a lot of stuff I don't remember. Why is it up here? No. It's yours. It's your thing. But I'm thinking one of the dumb things that they wanted to do was make Valley Games be their own Valley Games. They couldn't use any components from Williams, and Williams would make games in the same building with Williams components. It was a dumb idea, just super dumb. We didn't end up doing it It was a conversation to get it out of Neil's mind It was And to that point It was It would have been Truck stop You get a partial credit on truck stop It would be truck stop And they had jumper wires between the stand up targets For common And the wire was breaking And I go look into it And they're using solid wire As jumpers and on the spool of wire here it is, this big spool of wire do not use in environments with a vibration it's like, okay so I go see the guy, Ernie go see him on the line, what's going on this is what we always use not anymore they changed it on the belly games and they kept using it on the Williams and then Williams started having the problem and Ken Fedezda called me and said, how come you didn't change it on the Williams games And I go, I tried.
    14:12
    I really don't remember anything like that. I probably didn't have a game on the line. You probably didn't have a game on the line, right. But this is the kind of thing that you were trying to do is get engineering improvements. Like Steve says, we worked together, but there was this, and I think some of it was Steve Kordak, not so much. he was Mr. Williams and he just wanted to keep his arms around and keep Williams as pure as possible and you could see there were some of the things that were changing that he didn't necessarily resist change but you could just see he wanted to keep some things the way he remembered them and I think you can appreciate that well now for example I think one of your big accomplishments is that you brought in AutoCAD. Yes. So you started out hand drawing. We actually started CAD.
    15:15
    Actually, it wasn't AutoCAD, but we started CAD at Valley before we moved over. And then when we got to Williams, we started with two stations from digital computers. and they were these were you know these they weren't like today where you know they're everything's more or less standardized and standard components these were all specialized specialized it's like the VAC station or something like that yeah so yeah we got New England is here so they might know the VACs we got two of them and that was the beginning of starting to transition into digital drawings. That was a great thing. The first game I did digitally was Next Generation. I didn't really know that you brought AutoCAD there, so I am grateful. I'm still using it now. Yeah. And we did the document control system. Because this isn't, I wouldn't say this would be unique to any one company, but when you would look at the bill of material and you'd be looking for a ball guide, just a simple, silly ball guide, and it's one and a quarter inches long. if you paid attention to the stock room you'd see oh there's a one and a quarter inch ball guide part number five oh there's a one and a quarter inch ball guide part number 10 and because somebody didn't take the time to find out that it had already been designed and it was just easier to design it again put a new part number on it and so we'd have same part under multiple part numbers. So the program was to convert as many drawings as possible, identify as many drawings as possible, and reduce the amount of redundancy. Male Speaker 2 You know, I was just thinking about, there's a lot of parts that we made, like gates and switches, you know, like roll-unders. Male Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. Male Speaker 2 You can't find them to get, you know, I mean, You'd just end up making your original part pretty much because, I mean, some you could grab that would be standard, but not many, not often. You needed all those different sizes of gates and they're probably all there and already done but you can't find them. Right. But then with the new system you could search and all of a sudden there they are. Now it's still up to you to find out if it fits. But at least you had an idea of where they were at. So full text search is a wonderful thing. Yeah. The thing is, and again, I'll go back to ballet, it was a paper and pen system. And there was the engineering filing, and Marge was in charge. And Marge would cut off your hands if you went into those drawers because nobody was allowed to go into those drawers And she was the one that issued all the part numbers and you had to give her your drawing And she would analyze the drawing to figure out what part number, because she didn't want duplications. And she'd look at the drawing, she'd go back to the system. She was our sort. She was our sort person. And she would go through and say, here, we already have this. And she'd send you on your way. So it was a very disciplined company. Well, Marge was amazing. It was Elaine. Elaine Johnson who memorized every part we had. She was amazing. Yeah, she was a human computer. Her and John. Yeah.
    19:08
    Okay, so let's take that and let's drop back two decades. So you're coming in, and what I've learned from Greg Kmic, your colleague there working from high school and college, same as you. Yep, yep, yep. I got him the job. Yeah.
    19:28
    And he was talking to me, giving me some information about the designers would do their drawing of the, or some other way of laying out the play field, and somewhere on the way to production, it had to go to the engineering, production engineering or some team that was reviewing everything to try to standardize it?
    19:55
    Sort of. Well, we had our own R&D department, our whitewood department. Yeah. And we had an engineer, his name was Irv Grable, and he was the guy who would do the new one-of-a-kind mechanisms. and he had a can-do attitude. He never said it couldn't be done. He might tell you he doesn't know how to do it right now, but he'll figure it out. So he would do the mechs like he did the mech on Super Bowl Mania and the one between the flippers. And he was obsessed. He wanted to do it with a coil. He didn't want to do a motorized lift because that was too expensive. And he was all hell-bent that he was going to do it a coil. And it took him a long time, but he finally figured it out.
    20:54
    So with that being said, that mechanism, the Centaur mechanisms, or any mechanism that was an inline drop target, he would make a one-of-a-kind. And he'd go in the machine shop. He'd mill out a part. he did everything himself. He made the whole thing himself.
    21:15
    To Greg's point, then it's like you take all this and throw it over the wall to engineering. So now engineering would take it and do the official engineering drawings. And they would refine it. In other words, they would look at the design and they never had anything bad to say about it, but it would be like, well, we've got to change this and this for production, make it a little easier for production here. So they would take his designs and make them more for design for manufacturing. Yeah.
    21:46
    Lean manufacturing. Right. I was asking him in particular, Harry Williams did a couple mail-in designs like Firecracker, and those certainly must have been bally-ized. Some of those were the hardest designs because as a designer when you have a vision, you have a starting point in your head and you know where you want to go. When somebody, and that's with a blank piece of paper, when somebody gives you something, they say, I want this, and you look at it and go, oh, really? How am I going to do that? I think part of it is you don't have your heart and soul in it, so it becomes more of a problem-solving endeavor than a creative endeavor. Yeah. Now another thing I heard from Greg, if you look back here, we have a magnetic board and we have some sheet magnets. And I heard from Greg that Ted Sale used that system for some of his play field layouts. Did you see him do that? Can you describe? Yes, I can. Did he have the three bumpers always in a triangle like one magnet? They were always in the exact same triangle? Oh, you're talking about that. Oh, I thought you were going to be talking about something else. Does he throw magnets on a magnetic board?
    23:16
    He did. But I thought you're going to go down a different path than maybe. Ted Zayo was always thinking outside the box. And his designs, you know, back in the early days, games were always symmetrical. Ted's games were not. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So he was always looking for something new. well, like a ball guide, he wanted to do an anti-gravity ball guide.
    23:50
    So what he did is he put that magnetic material on the ball guide. So now it would go up again. It wouldn't fall off at the end of the lip. Huh.
    24:04
    So, yeah. That's where I thought you were going with that, but yeah. Yeah. So according to Greg, he would actually try to get very precise down to the 64th of an inch on the magnet board. He had grids. It was all gridded out, yeah.
    24:25
    And this then would eventually become hand-drawn on paper going into that file cabinet that Marge protected.
    24:33
    Smoking probably one or two packs of cigarettes a day while he did it, yeah. What year was that? Yours? Well, he started, I think, I think Ted started in 62, 63. Yeah, 62. Yeah. For the first pinball, 63 was their pinball comeback, so he would have been working on that in 62. His designs definitely influenced me. There's no question. He was something interesting about everything he did. He was a groundbreaker. He was a very interesting person.
    25:07
    Do you have any stories you can tell about? I mean, again, it goes back to the whole culture. You go in his car, and his wife was very short,
    25:23
    so he made a platform for her section of the cars so that it was higher so she could rest her feet. I mean, everything about him was, you know, he adapted whatever he could. Everything in his whole, I mean, not only in his car, but his office and everything else. Everything was just customized.
    25:45
    Let's get slide three from Jim's deck and get that ready. Talk about four queens. So to what extent was Ted mentoring you? And was he trying to tell you the game is too symmetrical or anything like that? Actually, I don't remember. it was just one of those things where it's a very safe basic design for the time ok let's get that on screen there and that was very typical of the time and this game is in the game room beautifully restored by Brian Hawkins vendor hall manager so you can play that game I operated that game I realized that because the center hole has five different values and then there's also an alternator and they're both driven off the match number unit that somebody could track the match number during the course of play of the game and you eventually were told that I guess we didn't well I mean, they tried to randomize as much as they could by interjecting positions in the score motor or whatever, but obviously much more predictable. Yeah.
    27:10
    But how did that feel at that time? This was like your step up out of being the helper? Well, I started playing the games. Then I started, after playing the games, I disassembled. Because we saved every component off the Whitewoods and reused them and reused them and reused them. You know, we didn't just, and that's why there's no Whitewoods from that era. Because they were all disassembled and components were repurposed. so I went from that from taking them apart to building them to wiring them to doing schematics because that was all electromechanical and then finally got a chance to do a design Ed, did you ever have any trouble of hitting the bomb and still wanting more features in it and having to take things out? Yeah, I mean, there was no flexibility in the cost of the game. They had a number, and we weren't allowed to go over it. I mean, there was no plead your case. For the most part, it took the act of God, something really special to get something to move on that portion of the game. So at that, you're looking at, that's 1970, you know, 71. Through 75, it was all, it was solid. I mean, this was, things didn't change. I went to, I went to Europe in 71, 72. They sent Ted Zale over there, and then they sent me over there, and we met with all the distributors to come up with their wish list because Gottlieb was number one. They were the big gorilla. And Valway really wanted to take over.
    29:20
    So they started by sending Ted there. Ted and I couldn't talk. We weren't allowed to talk. And then they sent me there. And then when we got back, we filed separate reports. and then after the reports were finally digested, then they combined them and came up with, these are the first ten things we're going to fix, these are the next ten things. And it was as simple as they hated our ball plunger. They hated our ball plunger. Get rid of that.
    29:55
    The Gottlieb one is beautiful. Get rid of this, get rid of that. I mean, now to us, you didn't see that much difference. But they wanted certain things changed, and they made those concessions. So maybe we could go to high-low ace.
    30:16
    Something like that seemed to me, and I had some of your games on my route, not just Four Queens, but High Low Ace certainly seems like a very Gottlieb-ish kind of layout. They want, well, it's a card game, right? And you had the feeder lanes, the in lanes. I mean, it was,
    30:40
    we made multiplayer games, four-player games were made for Germany. One-player games were made for Italy. and that's just the way it was let's pull up his slide 9 circus 73 so that's probably another one that was so yeah another one that seemed to me more symmetrical and more I operated Monte Carlo there's circus you can see very classic bottom that Italians... Hated that artwork. Yeah. Dick White artwork. Dick White, I hated that artwork.
    31:30
    But the one active bumper kind of in a corral with two passive bumpers beside it, so a lot of bumping around there.
    31:40
    It was... Which could have been a Gottlieb idea or a Chicago coin idea for that matter. It was, you know, when you're starting out at least for me you look and see what you like or what you don't like and you want to grow upon that so you take a feature and you expand and expand and expand I think it was just a learning experience but that game Circus had some of the from your Italian trip and then there was Champ Yeah. And that's slide number 11, so step ahead a couple. Or Flickr would be, yeah.
    32:23
    Yeah. Champ. Wow, that's symmetrical. Yes, it is. And that Sky Kings is very similar to that. It's the one-player version. Yeah.
    32:38
    Yeah, basically, you're testing me. I did, there's 40 different games, but I think the 40 different games boil down to 30 different designs. Yeah, like, so Circus had Big Show, and Monte Carlo had Odds and Evens.
    32:58
    And this is a good time to bring up test marketing, I think. So I saw Odds and Evens in a test location one full year before I could order it.
    33:12
    Seems like an awful long lead time. Do you remember anything? Were you reworking it, rethinking what to do with that? No.
    33:23
    Just other games had priority, maybe? No. Now I get to test your memory. Okay. Was there anything unusual about that odds and even game?
    33:38
    That have trip relays in it? No, we were playing around with different playfield materials. Oh, okay. Well, I didn't see that in the production ones. We were playing around with expandable foam playfields.
    33:53
    So they were fantastic in the sense that the artwork adhered to them and lasted forever, never deteriorated. but what was bad in this had that we again learning from mistakes without UV inhibitors all the what would be the bare wood areas would turn dark green and it wasn't very appealing yeah and then they also got riddle they got brittle and sections would break off. Well, here's your planned obsolescence, I guess. So one of the things that I like best about Bally in that era is that, like your game four, there were games that could fail even at that test stage. It was a real test, it was not just for show, and at that same time, Gottlieb did pro football, which looked like a dog when I saw the test piece, turned out to be a dog.
    35:02
    Luckily, because I saw the test piece, I didn't buy it. And four, I'm not so sure that would have looked like a dog to me.
    35:13
    I own one now, the one that was at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire. But I think the way the rules were presented was a little hard to follow. you're trying to make it look more like a golf game than just put out all ten lights now that I've looked through the schematic over and over again I see what you were going for so I hope you don't feel like it's a total failure you get to fail again it was if I remember it was another group project the art certainly was And there were certain people who really, really liked golf and really wanted a golf game. So you're going to do a golf game. Okay. And so that's kind of where that came from.
    36:05
    Yeah. But, I mean, some of the other ones that failed, Joker and Red Max and like that. You could say. Can't even find a Red Max. Yeah. these are games that quantities of 70 and 80 and 55 in a couple cases that for the test pieces and some you can say yeah that is boring i i can't wait for this game to be over so i could walk down to the next one at the pinball show or something but i give a lot of credit to ballet for for doing that and what i found out And so the distributor here was Bally Northeast so a company distributorship And Arnold Kamenkow was running it Joe father He put me in touch with some people at the factory He was a financial guy, so he put me in touch with the financial people, the ones he knew.
    37:05
    I found out that the test marketing, there was a lot of leverage given to the airport in New Orleans.
    37:15
    Lewis Boldenburg. Louie Boasberg of New Orleans Novelty. Okay. And that location that made Fireball seem like a real hit. Oh, okay.
    37:29
    Yeah. That's the name of it. Yep. It did really well. It would be the kind of game, first week, $60. Second week, $45. Third week, $30. Fourth week, time to rotate it. that's a pretty frequent rotation schedule you don't really want that but it was because at an airport of course you're going to get so many people going through who have never seen the game and they're going to think it's really dazzling and has that funny spinning rubber tread I think Fireball took off after it was in the magazine oh in the Playboy magazine December 72 that's when it got the shot in the arm So that was developed without any extra cost and that was within the cost guidelines? Yes. Because it seems like quite a bit to cut that field and have that bend in it. But you're utilizing the same, I mean, it's just extra work. It isn't necessarily extra material or anything.
    38:36
    That was risky though. It's like pulling up a piece of wood. I wouldn't do that today. But we did it. I know. And it worked. It worked, but it's like, maybe the wood was better. I don't know. I think it might have been. And the hard coat. We could use really harsh, nasty chemicals that we can't use today.
    38:56
    I'm not going to speak about that anymore. Too many chemicals. I'm sorry. Fireball was a big influence on us, definitely. When I say us, I'm talking Eugene Jarvis and me at Atari. Well after you. I mean, it was nice. They have a longer history than me. I mean, the colors were spectacular. Yeah, what the game did was awesome. Multiball. Well, let's talk about art then, because in addition to games being thrown over the wall to engineering for production, I understand that in the Zale era, at least, and probably for some of your games, the art, you were not designing knowing what the art was? Is that the case?
    39:46
    Like Four Queens did you know that was Well that was because it was a card game but more than that you knew it was going to be a card game you know we want to make you know we want to make Cowboys and Indians we want to make a road rally game we want to you know there would be certain themes that they would request we didn't start off with designs because I probably did not just me but four games a year so I mean it was just bam bam bam get it over give it to somebody else let them worry about it let's go to slide 16 for twin win clearly that's got the little race track on the play field so you had to know it was a racing game that's my point it was going to be a racing game.
    40:41
    And you get Dave Christensen, and we seem to have two versions of the back last there. Yes, we do. Dave Christensen testing the boundaries. No, actually that was, I did that. Oh, okay. Tell us what you did. Go on, Jim, what did you do? We used to do our photo shoots in the engineering department. For the flyer. Promo photos. And so I knew that there was going to be a shoot the next day. It was scheduled. So I was staying late, and I took a back glass, and I started scraping off the art from the back.
    41:24
    Christensen came in, caught me doing it. What are you doing? And he grabbed it from me and took it away. And he brought it back a few hours later all done.
    41:36
    And so the next day at the photo shoot, Herb Jones was a Yale grad. He was in charge of promotions and marketing and all things good.
    41:54
    He comes in, you guys have gone too far. And he ran off. I quickly took that glass up, put the other one back in. I get a call from the front office, Jim, you almost killed him. I don't know what you're talking about. You almost killed him. I go, I don't know what you're talking about. He goes, bring it to my office. I want to see it. So that's how that came about. but that you had Christian Marsh and then this guy Dave Christensen Mad Dog comes along so four actually that's the team thing might have been Dick White doing the golf bag but Christensen did the girls and it was said that Bob Tim did the back glass but then later someone showed it to Bob Tim and he said, no, I didn't do that. So we don't know who did that back glass.
    42:56
    That was a very strange development. The whole art thing was just bizarre at that time. I mean, the artwork that they did, because they did artwork for slot machines, that was fine because that was pretty much straightforward. There wasn't a lot of personality in the slot machines per se. It was mostly mechanical stuff. And the bingoes, you had very little space.
    43:22
    So then, you know, Paul Ferris came on, and then, you know, Paul brought in, you know, Greg and Margaret and Kevin, and things finally got pulled together in the right direction.
    43:35
    Yeah, so do you remember which of the games was the first one where you were conscious of what the art was going to be during the design cycle?
    43:46
    Tom Neiman basically he pioneered promotions and the license things well it's a very loose yes they were licenses but they didn't cost anything because pinball was so popular he could talk somebody into it we'll give you a couple games ok we'll put you on the back last will make you famous. So, yeah, Tom worked that angle very, very well. Well, again, this would be about 19, you know, Wizard was the first one. 75, so it was right around 75.
    44:33
    I had Playboy in development, which was a Whitewood. It wasn't Playboy. And I had another game, which was called Light Aligned in development. I forget what I called Playboy. and Light Align was a 5x5 matrix instead of a 4x4 that KISS had. Yeah. And they came in and said, how would you like your game to be KISS?
    45:00
    Okay. You got to take out one row and one column. Okay. So then it was, you know, figure out where it had to change so that it could be a 4x4 instead of 5x5, and that's how that play field became KISS. Now, I don't remember what I had to do to modify Playboy, but I do remember that was when we put in the music on the chime box for the Playboy theme. Right. And talked about people who didn't want to see change.
    45:35
    It was ridiculous how people, we are not making jukeboxes, we make pinball machines. And it was like, that was a hard sell. that was a hard sell getting that into the game and you weren't even paying royalties on that music no I would think Hefner would be very happy exactly he was always trying to reuse that theme from what I can tell so you saw the whole change in art from sending things off to whatever Christian I mean when Ad Posters was doing artwork for the games,
    46:15
    George Malenta would bring in like three different play fields. This one is based on different blues and contrasts, and this one's in the red family, and they'd have the back glasses, and he'd have this back glass goes with this, and this goes, and you'd see management go, no, we want this back glass with this play field, and they would just mix them up. And, okay, you can see he was in a business to make money, but you can see it also broke his heart. Yeah. So.
    46:53
    Get ready for questions. Start walking up to the microphone there if you have questions. Favorite game that you designed? Centaur. Easy question. Matahari would be probably also it's up there that one was called Bank Shot yeah that's certainly understandable you can play it in the room there's two Mataharis in the room it was that was another one that took time to figure out like if you shot the lowest drop target on the left hand side you would hit the lowest target on the right hand side with the same shot and that was intentional yeah okay that's slide 18 if you want to jump ahead a couple there and see what a hurry but you can play it for yourself okay we have a Ted sale expert at the microphone here okay That's a big intro, Dave. So I had a long list of questions, and as Dave was talking with you, I was taking them off my list one by one by one. But I do have a question about the production lines in your early days at Valley.
    48:17
    Ted Zale and team were turning out, on average, a game every six weeks. And nowadays, manufacturers turn out three a year, and they think that's a big deal. How did you do so many games at one time, and how many lines were there working simultaneously? oh you have to remember the runs were shorter so i mean depending on what period of time you're talking about i mean a 5 000 run was huge but i mean typically they were you know 500 1200 you know if it was a thousand maybe two thousand two thousand was probably there was probably a number of 2000s. Yeah. Well, bizarre, 2925, so that must have been a cause for celebration. I think that if you look at, wow, I can't remember what year this was.
    49:22
    Well, a breakthrough game was Capersville in 1966. That's not what I'm talking about. We got up to 500 games a day in manufacturing.
    49:34
    500 games a day. We were running games on Belmont Avenue. We were running games out in Franklin Park. And we were building games in Ireland. so I mean that's when you gotta scratch your head and say what's going on and that was probably 77 somewhere around 77 78 yeah You have only one question? I can't believe it. You literally decimated my list as you were talking. Great. That's all that was left. Happy to do it.
    50:29
    Okay, another question coming up. Go ahead. Hi, Jim. Hi. The question I have is around managing ego during the Valley-Midway merger. Okay. You've got one team coming in from Valley-Midway and then the other team at Williams. How did you manage? Because everybody's got to be looking over their shoulder, right, as to who's out the door, who's sticking around. As much as people wanted to work together, because you have to understand we all knew each other. I mean, Steve and I were on a design cycle where our games, more often than not, would end up in the field testing against each other. So, I mean, did we hate each other? No. I think there was a mutual respect. and so I think that when we came over I think that the most difficult part wasn't the egos per se but you take a three bedroom house and you move 20 people into it and that's kind of what it was all of a sudden everybody's workspace became smaller and everybody became, you know, I mean, they didn't, it just became awkward because it wasn't, you know, everybody had to make sacrifices. And I think Williams felt that, you know, they shouldn't have had to because we were here, but why do we have to have a smaller office now? People had mentioned that there was like competition to get time in the machine shop or competition with... But that's always the case. Even two designers in the same company would kill each other to get... I mean, take a guy to lunch. Give him a case of beer. I mean, a case of beer went a long way in the machine shop. You got your parts first. So, I mean, you wouldn't know about that, would you, Steve? Well, you know if I want. so no I mean that had nothing to do with Bally versus Williams this was just every designer is always they're very competitive so well I would think for the Bally guys it probably felt good to be more wanted by your corporate parent it was a very awkward the whole transition was awkward because some people were given severance packages and other people were told no and you can't quit either you have to go can you mention some names no why why? you can't quit yeah me I couldn't I either had to quit or no he got laid off no they weeded out I mean again William Zomi wanted so much you know I'm kind of sorry to hear that that's how you felt about it I got along with you I got along with Greg, Pat, everybody pretty much.
    54:12
    Well, we did. No, we didn't have any animosity towards Williams. It was just the way Neil and company and everybody handled it. You just have to learn to ignore Neil.
    54:25
    So, no, that was the awkward part. The awkward part was just the way they did it. Not the people. not the people within the company, but the way the merger happened.
    54:41
    I think Williams really wanted to keep down Valley. Any more questions? More questions? Oh, okay, if you're coming down the line here. And, and you are officially retired now, right? I'm officially retired. Not looking to be COO of any other pinball companies. Okay, so we get that out of the way.
    55:13
    Hello thank you Centaur is one of my favorite games So thank you for that Thank you I also very partial to games from the EM solid state transition and I know a lot of your games straddled that line. Blackjack, Matahari.
    55:35
    Yeah, your game Flickr got to be the prototype for the solid state system. bow and arrow my question is as a designer did you factor into that transition or is that strictly engineering share about those titles no what you have to understand is that again it's all about economics and you can't have a memory feature electromechanically speaking one player games had features that a four player game couldn't have because you only had one set of logic for the one player game and you couldn't afford to put in four times as many relays to keep track of all those different features so yeah when we knew the electronics was coming yeah that was like woohoo now we get to do you can do equitable because you can remember what you're doing instead of you do all the work and the next player takes it away and steals it from you like fireball where you can steal the other guy's locks so you mentioned Blackjack. I think the game, what was the other one? Little Joe? Little Joe was your earlier, the dice-themed game? The dice game. That was done with, again, this was Irv Grable, the guy who was the mad professor. He came up with a resistor ladder logic.
    57:29
    Because we couldn't afford all different relays for all the different combinations and he was able to figure out a circuit where it was just one relay. You know and it was like okay. So that I mean everybody was starting to think towards the features that could be utilized during the electronic era. So yeah it was I think that we were all very excited to know that was coming. Okay. This is the guy that did the Four Queens restoration. Yeah.
    58:16
    I think so. I think that, I mean, I don't know of anybody who saw electronics as a barrier. I don't know of anybody that viewed it, not from a designer perspective. I think some individuals in certain companies felt that it was just going to be short-lived. It would never work.
    58:47
    And let's go back to ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and let's live that life forever. And I guess movies still live that life forever, no matter what game's on the screen. But, so, no, I think that, you know, it's a toolbox. It's just one more tool in the toolbox, and it makes it easier to, you know, accomplish things.
    59:16
    Another question I had is, in the era of the EM, the designers now, they're focused mainly on the geometry of the big field and all flow and that kind of thing, and there are separate keys to the software and animations for the screen and stuff. In the EM area, did the designer get into the electronics and the design of the rules and the art so much, or is it pretty much the physical layout?
    59:42
    Certain, I mean, not all designers could do relay logic. You know, some could and some couldn't. we had people who were assigned those tasks but you had again you had to wait in line so and so was doing the schematic for your game and you had to wait well if you didn't want to wait you did it yourself not everybody could do it themselves so that's why some designers had advantages in that respect well for some of your first few games were you Were you drawing out the whole schematic and working out all the interactions of all the relays?
    60:34
    Yeah, at some point. I don't remember at what point, but yeah. I mean, I remember, again, this was a hell project. It was a game sent in by Ted Zale. He was out in Mount Home, Arkansas, and he was going to fly in and review the game with management. and the game had to be running by whatever, you know, pick some unrealistic tomorrow. Okay. No, I mean, it's what it was.
    61:05
    And so I stayed that night to wire the game. You know, so I literally realized, you know, very quickly that there was no way I could cut a green wire for this and a blue wire for that. and I just couldn't do it. So I just grabbed one spool of wire and I just wired the whole game with one color wire.
    61:30
    It worked. But then they wanted to make changes to the rules. I got swore at a lot. But it was just one of those things. It was just like either you wanted the game for tomorrow or not. There was no way to do it. And I basically stayed all night just to finish it. let's throw in another name before we go back to the questions uh al greg who's a manager or director of design or something like that after ted zale you remember anything about him that you want to tell us i remember being very awkward the first time i met him in belly because he was in charge of a different company called games incorporated he was in charge yeah He was in charge of manufacturing over there. And they were building a game for belly, and it wasn't working.
    62:25
    Some arcade type game, I guess. Yeah, it was the pitch and bat. It was a mechanical baseball game. And so it was summertime, so I was assigned to go over and troubleshoot all the games on the line for them. I was 17 years old. It didn't go over very well. because I'm showing them all the mistakes they made. Yeah. So that was the first time I met El Greg. And then a number of years later, he's like, oh, okay. Yeah, Ted Sales is retiring. He's your new boss.
    63:06
    Hopefully you can know how to troubleshoot a game now. Yeah, if you look up online, Games Incorporated have made some pretty crazy i think they they did the ski and score some outlandish ideas well this what it was is again i was part-time so i didn't get vacation yeah and so i was working and it wasn't just belly i think the whole industry would shut down for the first two three weeks of july all the companies went on vacation at the same time well since i didn't wasn't entitled to it, I was still there doing whatever they left behind for me to do. And this mechanical baseball game, it was a bunch of decks. A ball would roll down a ramp. So it was the updated scientific batting practice. Yeah, yeah. And then mechanically, you were the force behind the bat, and it wasn't working. You know, the mechanism was jamming. So I called the, you know, vice president and I said, you know, this isn't working. He goes, what's wrong with it? I go, the casting isn't right. He goes, fix it. I go, okay, I'll get it fixed. So they had to mill it out differently to give some clearance. And they fixed it. So that's how I got drawn into being the leader. I mean, a lot of the things within the company was out of necessity. I was put in charge of the slot machine reel mech line because the foreman had a hernia. So it's like, okay, you, go.
    64:50
    I mean, that's the way they were. I mean, it's just the way it was. So you never knew what you were going to be doing until you were told.
    64:59
    Have a question here? Sorry, that's loud. This way. Yeah, Jim, love your work. I got to send tower rolling stones, Mata Hari.
    65:11
    What else we got? Blackjack. And I was fortunate to pick up, I wanted to get a regular blackjack, but I found one, an EM, which is a pretty rare 138 made. And I want to get your take on making that two-player. Why a two-player versus a four-player like the solid-state version? And what kind of was going through your head when you had a design, or was there any difference between designing the EM version or the solid-state version of blackjack? How that went for differences for you in designing? Again, I think it was just the features were such that multiples of the electromechanical devices just became cost prohibitive. So it was easy to do it electronically. It didn't cost anything. Slide 17, if you want to bring it up. The one before that.
    65:55
    I mean, a lot of the different, you know, a lot of the direction was just based on cost from management. So what could be, you know, that's why electronics gave us a, I mean, it was 40 switches, 16 solenoid drivers, and 64 lamps. Go have a nice day, you know.
    66:25
    So that was. There's arc differences in those two. Did you have any input on the arc differences between the two-player EM and the solid state? No, again, that was, you know, the art department was somewhat independent of us. I mean, sometimes they would ask, you know, I think that depending on the artist, certain people, you know, would ask more questions than others, you know, or ask for input, I would say. when like Paul and I worked on Centaur he was very interested in what I thought I don't know if he would have done that game with anybody else because he knew I would be receptive to the idea and again necessity is the mother of invention I knew what my game was costing so by having only three colors on the play field cost was less because it was so much for each screen on the play field so it's like when we talk it's like done, done perfect, I love it plus black is the cheapest color of ink so I mean it was with the red accent for just to get things pop again I'm very proud of that game with the different translucent inserts and so forth I think that game was, just so everybody knows, that game was called Video Classic when I did it as a Whitewood. And the reason it was Video Classic is because I went and looked at all the different video games and what they had for their features. And, you know, one of them was the attract mode. A video game would be playing an arcade all by itself, showing you what the rules were. the game would talk to you, you know, to prompt you, to give you more instructions to tell you how to play the game once you put your money in. So I went through and I tried to cherry pick what I considered to be the main features, you know, or some of the key features, I should say, in video games that made them appealing. And that's why, is everybody familiar that Centaur has the self-play mode if it isn't played for a certain period of time. Yeah, if Centaur isn't played for, it's a setting, but if it isn't played for a period of time, it'll just kick out all the balls and start playing itself. So that was to show you that, hey, this is a multi-ball game. Now, in the arcade, people would be going, where'd those balls come from? Because there's no places to capture the balls. So it worked out well. I think we can do two more questions. One more. Did you have any influence on taunting you? Centaur always taunted you. Oh, I did. Yes. That was you. I sat with a jug of wine in my lap, in my family room, with a playfield drawing on the floor, coming up with the script and coming up with how I wanted it to sound. And the drunker I got, the more I sounded like the game. so I worked out a lot of it.
    69:46
    The sacrifices you make. I know. You have a question? Well, yeah. I mean, I've heard the story also. It was funny, just to throw this out. Jim can tell you the story later about his babysitter who got scared to death because the game was going into a track mode in the basement, and she just thought somebody was down there. She went downstairs and played the game while we were out, and when we came home, you could see she was terrified, And it was like, what's wrong? There's somebody in the basement.
    70:18
    And it's like, what? And they said, did you play Centaur? Yes. Did you turn it off? I don't know. Okay. There's nobody in the basement.
    70:29
    The question I got, though, for you, Jim, you said something that triggered me. You said bow and arrow. So can you share a little bit about bow and arrow and also Southland Engineering and their work to make Bigfoot, which was basically bow and arrow. It was bow and arrow. But a gigantic version. And did you have any input with Southland Engineering during that time? What happened is they brought in the game and management, I mean a lot of games were brought in, and management made a lot of decisions, some of which maybe weren't the best because Nolan Bushnell brought Pong into engineering and management decided they didn't want to make it. But anyhow, that game was brought in and they wanted to see it played because the game that was brought in was crude.
    71:28
    So, yeah, I was assigned that project. I got a 4x5x10 sheet of plywood and made a drawing table and basically drew bow and arrow to scale on that platform. I mean they already had it done but this was to make it you know accurate and the flipper coils were 110 volt dormires. We got that we got that so these are big T bar solenoids. They take your finger off if you weren't careful. We got the, because they came in with a cue ball. You know, that was what they used. So you scaled up the ball and everything. Well, the thing is you couldn't scale up the ball because if you do the math, they would have weighed like five pounds. Yeah. But so we did a hollow cast, and it was fine. I mean, we got it to, I mean, it was a little different dynamic because all the weight was on the outside of the ball, so it's like a flywheel. So you got a lot more rotational force out of it, which was, you got used to that. Plus, this wasn't a real pinball machine. This was a novelty. But, I mean, it played pretty well until you grabbed the ball and you're like, because, you know, I don't know if you do, but you're nervous, you bounce the ball on the floor, you catch it. Well, since it was hollow cast, pieces would break off on the inside, and then you had a baby rattle. So it was, yeah. Is that a completely EM machine? Yes.
    73:17
    And Dormeyer is the famous Chicago manufacturer of generic solenoids and occasionally home appliances that Harvey Heiss went to when he got out of pinball.
    73:29
    So Chicago, it always comes back to manufacturing companies in Chicago. you