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Silverball Chronicles Ep 38: By Golly It's Bingo

The Pinball Network·video·1h 22m·analyzed·Jun 10, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Silver Ball Chronicles explores bingo/one-ball machine history and celebrates community contributions to pinball preservation.

Summary

Silverball Chronicles 38 explores the history of bingo and one-ball gambling machines from the 1930s-1950s post-war era, tracing their evolution and mechanical/design significance. Hosts David Dennis and Ron Hallett discuss early horse-race themed games like Home Stretch and Seabiscuit, their role as designed gambling devices, and the transition to bingo machines. The episode features community emails, discussion of upcoming Stern's John Wick and a Funhouse remake, and extensive praise for Nicholas Baldridge archival work on wood rail and bingo machines through his For Amusement Only podcast.

Key Claims

  • Funhouse is likely his best game

    medium confidence · David Dennis discussing Funhouse remake; stated as opinion but framed as expert assertion

  • Godzilla is Stern's best-selling title ever with 27,000+ units sold

    high confidence · Knowledge base confirmation; aligns with industry benchmarks

  • One-ball games were specifically engineered as gambling devices to incentivize repeated play across multiple games rather than single-play amusement

    high confidence · Steve Smith (wood rail/bingo guru) quoted via For Amusement Only podcast; corroborated by multiple expert sources in episode

  • For For Amusement Only podcast is the modern authoritative resource for bingo machine and wood rail history

    high confidence · David Dennis direct statement; credited for comprehensive archival work preserving pinball history

  • Bally and United dominated the bingo machine market in the 1950s alongside competitors like Pamco and Williams

    high confidence · David Dennis citing research for bingo machine history episode

  • Crawl pinball prototype was a maintenance nightmare and broke repeatedly at Expo, explaining its failure to reach production

    high confidence · David Dennis discussing listener restoration project; references complex underplayfield and refraction mechanics as design challenges

Notable Quotes

  • “I really like the way that John Wick looks. I think it's a really great game right out of the gate.”

    David Dennis@ 2:22 — Early positive reception of upcoming Stern John Wick game designed by Elliot Eismin; signals potential market interest

  • “I think Funhouse is probably Pat Lawlor best game? No. I think so.”

    David Dennis / Ron Hallett@ 2:56 — Debate over Pat Lawlor's legacy designs; reflects design philosophy disagreements in community

  • “Most of the research in this episode comes from Nicholas Baldridge... Nick absolutely is the modern resource for all bingo machines, wood rail type pinball stuff.”

    David Dennis@ 15:56 — Attribution of episode research and celebration of community archivist work; establishes Baldridge as authoritative source

  • “These were engineered to make money... they were specifically designed to incentivize you to keep gambling.”

    Steve Smith (via For Amusement Only podcast, quoted)@ 29:17 — Expert confirmation that one-ball/bingo machines were gambling devices by design, not casual amusement

  • “If you're getting a winning score every five nickels, you've achieved God status.”

    Jeffrey Lotten (via For Amusement Only podcast, quoted)@ 30:52 — Illustrates difficulty and skill/luck balance of one-ball games; establishes performance metrics for competent play

  • “Try to get that by Gomez nowadays. He won't even let you put an upper play field in.”

    David Dennis@ 12:05 — Commentary on modern design constraints vs. historical complexity; references George Gomez as design philosophy arbiter

Entities

David DennispersonRon HallettpersonNicholas BaldridgepersonElliot EisminpersonPat LawlorpersonKeith ElwinpersonRoger SharpepersonSteve PortickpersonSteve Smithperson

Signals

  • ?

    content_signal: Silver Ball Chronicles Episode 38 represents ongoing high-quality archival/educational content production with significant community engagement; episode structure includes listener mailbag, Patreon supporter model ($3-$20 tiers), merchandise sales (t-shirts), and multi-platform distribution

    high · Detailed discussion of Patreon structure, merch platform (Silverball Swag), Facebook engagement, episode release across multiple feeds

  • ?

    historical_signal: Nicholas Baldridge's For Amusement Only podcast is recognized as the authoritative modern archive for wood rail and bingo machine history, filling a critical documentation gap for early pinball era machines and mechanics that would otherwise be lost

    high · David Dennis explicitly crediting Baldridge as 'modern resource for all bingo machines, wood rail type pinball stuff' and praising his 'audio journaling' for historical preservation

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Tension between modern design philosophy (represented by George Gomez) that restricts complex mechanics like upper playfields vs. historical machines that embraced mechanical complexity; discussion of Crawl prototype's failure due to maintenance burden suggests this reflects broader industry shift toward simplification

    medium · David Dennis comment about Gomez not allowing upper playfields; Crawl discussion showing complex underplayfield design caused repeated breakdowns at expo

  • ?

    product_launch: Stern Pinball's John Wick received positive early reception from design community expert David Dennis despite prior criticism of designer Elliot Eismin's previous mechanical work; signals potential strong market reception for mechanical novelty in game

    medium · David Dennis praising John Wick design after previously criticizing Eismin's mechanics; enthusiasm expressed about future play opportunity

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.246

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. By golly, it's bingo! Isn't it swell? Is it the 30s voice? Yeah, we're going to do the 1920s guy. Oh, God, no.
0:30
Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. With me this month and every month is Ron Teletasweeney Hallett. What's up, fella? Hello.
1:02
Tell it to Sweeney. I don't get that. That is 1920s slang, which means that you're full of crap. Okay. You're not going to talk like that the whole episode, are you? Only in specific areas, because this is one of the few times where I can crack out my 1920s voice. What have you been up to? Not much. You've been playing pinball? A little bit. A little bit of Elton John? Mm-hmm. Very nice. little announcement from John Wick. You're a big John Wick fan. I liked the first movie. I did. I've seen them all. I enjoy them all. I think the first one is borderline masterpiece. It's so good. It's so different and exciting. And as a movie person, a person who really likes films, I love the cinematography. I love the camera. It's just great. It's just so wonderful. I just like that he shoots everyone in the head. That's a good one. It's like, wow, why didn't I think of this? just everyone in the head, then you're just guaranteed death. Yeah, why? Everybody's always shooting everybody in the leg. Yeah, I don't understand it. He's the only one who gets it right. Yeah, but I mean, I think the pinball machine looks pretty cool, very exciting, from Elliot Eisman, who's one of the mechanical engineers over at Stern. I think in the past we might have, or maybe I, threw a little bit of shade towards him on some of his mechs and things like that, but I really like the way that John Wick looks. I think it's a really great game right out of the gate i'm looking forward to playing it probably not until next year at pentastic what i don't know you don't have any locations that would have that absolutely really no nothing i live in a i live in a pinball desert here in uh in eastern canada it's quite depressing the one that i'm very excited for though funhouse remake now that's something I'm going to keep my eye on because a couple of things. One is love Rudy, love Funhaus, probably I think Pat Lawler's best game? No. I think so. And also made by the Italians and everything made by Italians. Fantastic quality. Super excited. What do you think? I like Funhaus better than Funhaus, but yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, we're what, two minutes in here? Two minutes in. Hey, you got a weird accent. It just throws me off. that here we go show notes got all these weird misspellings all these extra u's everywhere i don't i don't understand show notes show notes well i mean i'm pretty excited for all the goings on here in the hobby at the moment it is we're getting through we're kind of in that post pandemic i think era now it's very nice to see uh things kind of becoming a little more normal in pinball, a little more exciting.
Jeffrey Lotten
person
Craig Smollishperson
Lyn Durantperson
Don Hookerperson
George Gomezperson
Silver Ball Chroniclesorganization
For Amusement Onlyorganization
The Pinball Networkorganization
Stern Pinballcompany
Ballycompany
Unitedcompany
Williamscompany
Pamcocompany
Gencocompany
  • ?

    rumor_hype: Community expectations high for Funhouse remake; unclear which manufacturer but significant collector interest; uncertainty about designer attribution (Pat Lawlor) suggests possible remake complexity

    medium · David Dennis expressing high excitement for Funhouse remake; debate between hosts about whether it's Lawlor's best game suggests lack of clarity on remake details

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong community engagement with Silver Ball Chronicles driving original machine restoration projects; listener Ben describing 2+ year effort to rebuild two copies of unreleased Crawl prototype from scratch, sourcing parts and reverse-engineering design

    high · Listener email describing collaborative Crawl restoration project with Pinside partner; reference to Pinside post documenting build process

  • ?

    historical_signal: Post-WWII one-ball and early bingo machines (1930s-1950s) were deliberately engineered as gambling devices designed to incentivize repeated play and maximize operator revenue, not casual amusement; government concern about organized crime and moral decay drove regulatory pressure

    high · Multiple expert sources (Steve Smith, Jeffrey Lotten, Craig Smollish) via For Amusement Only podcast confirming gambling design; machine mechanics (requiring multiple plays to build score) built around gambling model

  • ?

    design_innovation: One-ball machines (1930s-40s) introduced innovative mechanical features like pop bumper-like baskets, nudge-based skill mechanics, and probabilistic horse-race theming that established design patterns later adapted into modern bingo machines; Home Stretch and Seabiscuit demonstrate early playfield design sophistication

    high · Detailed descriptions of Home Stretch and Seabiscuit playfields showing shooter lanes, nudge mechanics, probabilistic basket systems; visual documentation in IPDB

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Seabiscuit game (1938) released coinciding with famous horse Seabiscuit being voted American Horse of the Year, suggesting early IP exploitation practices (likely without licensing fees paid to horse owner/Canadian trainer)

    medium · David Dennis noting Seabiscuit's 1938 release timing aligned with his American Horse of the Year award; speculation about licensing fees and joking about horse not receiving residuals

  • ?

    venue_signal: Community member experiencing pinball scarcity in Eastern Canada; limited venue infrastructure in region contrasts with well-established arcade ecosystems (e.g., Fun Spot New Hampshire referenced as major arcade with bingo machine on location)

    medium · Ron Hallett describing living in 'pinball desert' in Eastern Canada; Ben listener mentioning travel 2.5 hours for Circus Voltaire; Fun Spot New Hampshire reference as well-established venue

  • ?

    community_signal: Ron Hallett active in pinball tournament circuit and show floor community presence (TPF mentioned); physical community meetups at events (Pintastic referenced) with merchandise distribution and personal connections; contrasts with David Dennis's isolation in Eastern Canada

    high · Multiple listener references to meeting Ron at shows/tournaments; mention of Pintastic attendance; Patreon tier discussion includes shirts distributed at events

    • 3:48
    And the breadth of people manufacturing pinball is pretty exciting. If you want to chat with us, swing on over to facebook.com slash silverballchronicles. We can chat there, ask us a question, post on the wall, or answer one of our questions that we post up there from time to time. But if you want really exclusive access, you can join us on our Patreon. We have people joining and sticking around for a few months, and then kind of take it off into the sunset. And we thank everybody for giving us some of their hard-earned dollars just to say thank you. Nothing has changed with the podcast. It'll always be free on our dedicated feed and the TPN feed. But if you're interested in supporting the show, you can jump on the internets and type in patreon.com slash silverballchronicles. You can join us for as little as $3 a month just to say thank you. But if you want early access to all these episodes and no commercials, plus a sticker after three months, the spot you want to go is the $6 a month premium crony level. But if you want to say an extra top tier thank you, that's the elitist crony. After three months, you get a free Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Ron, you have some Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirts. Soft, luxurious. Yeah, my dad has one too. I told him to make sure he gets the one that says Ron first on it, and the names. That's right. I should get him one that specifically has, like, Ron crossed out. Really put a smile on his face. If you just want a t-shirt, though, you can swing on over to Silverball Swag. You can click on the Silverball Chronicles link, and there you go. We have been very active in our mailbag this last month, Ron. Have you seen these emails come flying in? I have. Every now and then we got to get this flurry of emails. It seems like everybody is interested in sending us an email. But then there's like a couple of months go by where it's like radio silence. And I wonder if anybody is listening. Let's talk about Ben. Hi, Ben. Oh, I can read it. Is this from Ben Kenobi? It could be. He didn't put his last name. It says, hi, Ron and David. No, no. It says, hi, Ron and David. Okay. Oh, yes. Exclamation point. Hi, Ron and David. I love your podcast. Now I'm on my way through all the episodes for the second time. Wow. there's so much information and amazing history to learn and i really enjoy it on my drive to and from work i love spending time with ron at tpf on the show floor and had fun hearing his impressions and knowledge in person i still feel i still feel horrible about my dogs during our breakfast trial and hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend yeah he was in the room next to us and his dogs barked uh jjp's elton john will always have a special place in my heart now keep up the great work i don't get to a lot of shows i'm a i'm really busy and i got a lot of young children a lot i have two young children so like i'm doing all the children stuff so i don't get out as much so it's always exciting to know that uh ron you're holding the flag the flag for silver ball chronicles that flag of course has ron's name first on it i play ben's really loud and obnoxious batman forever oh okay that's great multi-ball multi-ball multi-ball yeah okay Well, I got an email here from Mark S., and he's also working on our back catalog of episodes. Just started to listen and catching up on the old episodes. On the Stern episode right now, I was cringing at the comments on Quicksilver. It's all good, but that game is the best game of all time, and I love the art package. Things are subjective, I guess, but it's all good. That must have been you insulting it or something. It was. I thought Quicksilver is overrated. Because if I walk down my stairs to my basement, it's like right there staring at me. So I know it wasn't me.
    7:44
    When you sleep in your basement, is that the one you sleep under? No, I sleep on the couch that's in my basement. Okay. Actually, that is quite a comfy couch.
    7:53
    And then we've also got one from Alec. Wait a minute, Alec? As in Alec Guinness, Ben Kenobi? This is amazing. He says, hey, guys, obligatory love the podcast. I've been binging it up the last few weeks, and as I listen, I have Pinside, IPDB, and Pinball Map pulled up so I can visualize each pin you talk about and find somewhere to play the ones that interest me the most. See, I'm off to play Circus Voltaire 2.5 hours away in the next couple of weeks. Oh, I thought it was like Circus Voltaire 2.5. I was like, is that a new kit that I didn't see? It's probably made by the Italians. For example, John Papaduke games seem to call to me. I'm putting money aside to snag a Tales of the Arabian Nights someday. Also somewhat hoping for a Chicago Games remake, though. Oh, maybe Pedretti at this point. As a software engineer, I melted down when in one of the Pinball is Dying episodes, you said junior engineers got assigned to coding pinball at Bally Williams. So jealous. I can't imagine doing something that fun slash engaging as a junior engineer. usually i had to just change file names and do data analysis thanks for the content alec yes i think we met alec at pintastic i'm pretty sure this is the fellow we met in the tournament room he's wearing one of our shirts it's very possible yes i gave him a uh a little container of uh of maple syrup didn't know where you were going with that yeah he could take a little piece of me home with him or a thousand little pieces. We also had another Ben who emailed us different Ben, different Ben. This one's cool. Cause it talks about crawl for switching back and forth. It's your turn. Oh no, no. I want you to do this because I know what's coming. Hi, David and Ron. I'm three episodes in your podcast. And after being referred to you all from a friend, I'm finding it fascinating that I'm learning pinball history from you guys about things pinball related that I did not know that I thought I already knew as I've been into pinball for almost a decade. Can I please have two small Frosties? I only have chocolate. Chocolate is great. That is all. Sorry, I was ordering Wendy's and my phone picked it up.
    10:02
    Okay. I was immediately fascinated with the machines that were potentially great games that never made it into production for one reason or another. A buddy and I that met through Pinside are from the same city. We collaborated, redesigned, and built two copies of the crawl machine. It was a massive undertaking. It took over two years. You can check out that Pinside post. yeah super cool i i crawl one of my like weird uh movies that i really enjoyed when i was like younger yeah what's his face is in that the um liam neeson is in it yeah he's like a background guy but you know what the one thing i totally remember about that is there's so when you watch willie wonka and the chocolate factory from the 19 what is it 70s or whatever there's a teacher character in there and he's he's he's uh uh he's the teacher and he's telling them oh like you got to do how many chocolate bars did you eat and they're doing like division and fractions and stuff that guy was also in crawl as one of the main characters and i every time i see willie wonka i'm like where the heck do i know this guy from and it wasn't until wikipedia was invented that I was able to figure that out. When I think of crawl, I think of the thingy. The thingy that they throw, the disc thing. Yeah, it's like sharp knives. That's when I think of crawl. Super cool. And I think of the pinball machine and that it just kept breaking constantly at Expo. Yeah, so good for you, other man. If you could get it working, congrats, because that thing, that was a high-end pins restoration crawl, and the thing just kept breaking over and over and over. You could see why they didn't go to production with it. It looked like a maintenance nightmare.
    11:46
    Yeah, and I mean, black hole was bad enough. This thing, it has a huge underneath play field, like second play field, but then it's got the weird refraction thing to make it look small. It's so weird. Rather than just making it a small play field. We put this huge thing underneath here and we're going to make it look small. Try to get that by Gomez nowadays. He won't even let you put an upper play field in.
    12:12
    Bingo just isn't the game you can play at the county fair or a sketchy gambling establishment. Bingo is also the big brother to today's modern pinball. You'll remember we spoke about bingo machines and the issues that they had in our brief history of pinball episode. but we figure that bingo actually needs its own episode i mean come on we gave roger sharp two freaking episodes why can't we give bingo one i agree now have you ever played bingo i i've played bingo but i haven't played bingo uh like i haven't played a bingo machine like of the pinball variant uh but i've played the game where it's you know b10 yes and yep and you stand that once with uh basically my grandmother you know they were babysitting for me so they brought me out to their bingo game really bingo is i think a bigger thing where i'm at here in eastern canada for some reason like when you're a kid you play bingo in school or bingo was for old ladies that's basically the majority of people playing bingo and they'd have yeah like my my aunt she would have 10 of the cards like she would get and she's like did she have her own stamp she had a little stamper oh yeah oh yeah hardcore wow that's a big deal did she have a specific color did she have a lucky color that i don't know like purple i just know that at the um at fun spot in um new hampshire i love one of the largest arcades out there there's a bingo right next to the the main building yeah and that's when you get like when you're at that thing that's okay well let's get let's talk about bingo bingo machines yes i mean yeah yeah this is what the episode is about nobody wants to hear about our grandmothers playing bingo for god's sake. But I do want to draw some attention here to this one. I have almost zero experience with bingo machines. I've never even seen one. I have seen them, yes. Yeah. So the bar here, everybody who's listening, very low. There's going to be a lot of things we don't get right here. But I wanted to say that most of the research in this episode comes from Nick Baldridge, and people will know his name because he's popped up quite a bit in the pinball hobby, but I've used pieces from his For Amusement Only podcast. I've also had some correspondence back and forth with Nick asking some questions, and the issue with bingo is it is fairly complex, which is what makes it an exciting playing experience, and it's very difficult to sort of draw that out with not having a whole lot of knowledge or experience um that being said nick totally offered all of his time to give me a phone call to discuss and review and i didn't take him up on any of that wow i just was like can you send me a paragraph on how this works and he sent me like a huge like three paragraphs he's like well i can't really fit it into a sentence and i'm like okay and he just kind of gave me a whole paragraph and then i read it and i'm like oh i don't get any of this because I am kind of dumb. But I hope that Nick realizes that his podcast, the For Amusement podcast, isn't entirely about bingo machines, but he tries to stick in a little bit there. But Nick absolutely is the modern resource for all bingo machines, wood rail type pinball stuff. and his audio journaling has that he's been doing for years on this podcast ensures that there is an amazing place for bingo and the history of pinball machines that will be preserved for a very long time he should take a lot of pride in what he has done for the hobby even though I think most of our listeners may not know Nick Baldrige. Have you met Nick? Maybe. I don't know if I've met him. He seems like the nicest guy. Probably in a seminar he did.
    16:44
    Yeah. Seems like the nicest guy on the planet. So here's a summary from Nick about his For Amusement Only podcast. And I'll be the voice of Nick Baldrige. My podcast goes through each machine one by one in mostly chronological order so that the evolution can be noted. As I got into reverse engineering the games, I learned a lot more. When I did the same for the precursor one-ball horse race games, even more came to light. There were two dueling luminaries in the bingo space, Lynn Durant and Don Hooker, both creative engineering geniuses with different approaches to mechanical calculation, maintenance, and styles of play. Gambling has been a part of pinball history forever and even exists today. dollar games bingos hold great historical significance and the gameplay is really challenging and fun to boot okay i'm kind of excited here i'm really excited so what really gets me excited is uh the the the mesh of the way pinball is where it mixes art and engineering and physical play and mathematics and it jams that all together but the historical context of that is what really excites me. And that's why I do the podcast, which is really nerdy and really weird that it's the history that is so significant with some of this stuff. And this is my kind of episode because I'm learning things that I didn't know and I'm seeing old machines and things that I didn't even know existed but are an important part of our hobby. And importantly, there will be flyers. There will be flyers and there will be 1920s. Oh, no.
    18:22
    That's right. But let's wind it back. So time machine time, we get in the time machine, we go back. So after the Second World War, the technologies that were created during the war had really began to expand and then started to move kind of from the war effort into more of the individual or private company space. things like plastics, injection molding, computer systems, quote-unquote computer systems, right, with relays and all that stuff. Amusement devices really became much more common, but it was easier to distract yourself from the post-war era. One-ball machines were very popular and growing. So a one-ball machine was you had one ball and it would kind of go up and bounce around on some pins and fall in a hole and that was kind of it usually you would play you'd bring your high score to the attention of the barkeep or the pharmacist or whoever was working at the counter at the shop you were at where the one ball game was and you'd get like a store credit or you they'd buy you a drink or you'd get a cigarette or a couple of nickels back so i picked this one out for you this is vick camp and if you could have a super new york accent that i believe vick is from new jersey so oh i don't know why all right unless you're just going to say they're all the same let's see for me you really wanted me to do like you know like for me playing on route was so exciting to make these numbers exactly no i'm not doing that no no no no no for me playing on route was so exciting to make these numbers i love the pressure to move the closer i got to five in a row the more i knew i was going to make that number try harder and harder to make these inline scores or hits, which we bingo players call them. Going to do those inline scores and hits.
    20:17
    So there's terms here I don't even know. It's got its own language, and it's exciting. Now usually these one games in that time were like horse race theme or sports themes because that was kind of the popular male thing back in the 1940s and 50s I would argue sports betting along males is as strong as ever. Yeah. Now we're getting into what is it called? Fan duel and all that stuff. Yeah. Not a sponsor of this podcast. No. So all of that stuff, that's pretty popular. It tends to be kind of a thing.
    21:01
    Craig Smollish, a one-ball collector, began actively collecting wood rails in late 2012. Now, he ended up falling even deeper into a niche of horse race games after a couple of years in 2014. Now, these are individuals that have been on the For Amusement Only podcast, which is where I'm pulling a lot of these quotes.
    21:27
    And Craig says, without a doubt, these credit machines were designed and functioned well beyond simple amusement for the player. Along cash being awarded by the business owner, advanced side betting prior to the start of another race was a regular activity among patrons. I mean, it's pretty obvious that this post-war era, a lot of these like bingo, let's call them one ball at this point, horse race sports games were specifically designed to be gambling devices. Oh, yeah. Right. So here's like a couple of examples. Right. So one that popped up a lot through some of these podcasts was Genco. You said it right. Very good. I know. I did. Steve Portick would have been proud of you. Thank you, Steve.
    22:15
    So wonderful. This also had the same game in 37 called Auto Derby. Slightly different. This is kind of late 30s. The game is Home Stretch. Yeah, sorry. Home Stretch. And what are we kind of looking at here with this picture? It's like a very small tabletop kind of pinball-y thing, right? Pinball-y thing, yes. It's a tabletop, and it's got lots of horses. it's got horses they're racing it's got what look like dead bumpers or pop bumpers that are sticking up that aren't actually pop bumpers those are like they're like little baskets that catch the ball and it falls below the play field and i guess those are the points you get somehow it's all about nudging the ball but you can see there's a shooter lane right the ball goes up to the top and bounces left to right like a lot of cool horse horse artwork horses everywhere yeah it is very cool but this is really 1930s looking right like like really old school 1930s like this 1930s game really looks like a 1930s game now this this has a billboard ad it doesn't have a flyer you want to read you want to read this one ron uh let's see it's a mighty it's it's a mighty busy place filling orders no no no no no no it's a mighty busy place filling orders for these two new novelty game hits homestretch and auto derby for 74.50 audios today 74 dollars and 50 cents for some reason okay maybe you can talk them down to 74 i don't know these things were flying off the shelves back then ron uh it it's pretty cool check out ipdb and take a look at this it's you There's only a few photos because there's not a whole lot to it. But this was one that came up, and I really thought that that was well worth the time to take a look at it. The other one here is also from the late 30s, 1938. This is Seabiscuit. That was like a famous horse. Man, this horse, so famous. He got his own game.
    24:24
    Actually, I think it was a Canadian trainer. I wonder if he got any residuals, the horse. I seriously doubt it. Oh, like he had to license it? License. He had to license the horse? No, not a license for you. He turned it down. It's got a shamrock on it. Yeah, of course. His lucky Irish gimmick. Right. So it was, this is, so I'm looking at the back glass here, and it's got seven horses numbered one through seven. Really cool art. and then it has place win show and purse which are terms involved in gambling when it comes to horse racing uh the play field when we look at that that is also really interesting and it is uh really kind of unusual when you look at today's modern pinball and then bingo that would follow after so you got one ball it goes up bounces off the top arch and then it kind of comes down into one of these different areas. So the further down the play field that you can nudge the ball, the closer to a win you can get. You've got to collect all the different numbers for all the different horses, and it gets even higher for the replay value. Now, Bally Fairmont, 1941. I wonder if Seabiscuit is one of the first licensed games, even though I'm sure they didn't pay anything for it. Because it looks like the year it came out, Seabiscuit was voted American Horse of the Year that year. American Horse of the Year. Who was American Horse of the Year this year, Ron? Well, this year's not over yet, so it'll probably be last year. But that's interesting. Seabiscuit was at the height of his popularity, and they made a game featuring him. Cody's Wish was Horse of the Year last year in 2023. So shout out to Cody's Wish, trained by William I. Mott. Cody's Wish will probably not be getting his own game. No, no, his licensing fees are too high. so fairmont by uh bally as well a one ball game looks very similar win place show uh purse one through seven really exciting back glass right it's it's classy it's old it really pulls on those i would almost say nostalgia things but this antiquey kind of artistic stuff now when we look at the pinball machine or the the one ball machine by itself look at the size of this thing well the cabin it goes all the way to the floor there's no legs per se there's no legs it's all wood it's huge it must weigh a million pounds it kind of looks similar to the one that elton john plays in tommy that kind of shape yeah hey you know what i bet you that's probably where they got that from that thing and then there looks like in the photo here on ipdb looks like an old toyota or something in the background. Okay.
    27:17
    Pretty cool stuff. All right. Yeah, so that's kind of cool. You know, take a look at those just so you can kind of get a visual understanding if you're driving, don't. Now, there's a really cool one ball article, which I will include in the show notes that you can kind of dive a little bit deeper into one ball games, kind of from that late 30s, early 40s. Tying it back to for amusement only podcast, episode 54 nick hosts a gentleman named jeff lotten who is a bingo and one ball guru jeffrey has been repairing wood rails and em machines for decades and he's even written articles in pin game journal and jeffrey says once you get the idea of what you're supposed to do you need to keep the one ball moving so that you can get past the first couple of rows and get into place Then if you're lucky, you can actually make a winner once in a while. If you don't shoot it right, it's done. It's gone before you realize. The games are set up just like everything else at that time. There's certain holes that are designed to be very easy to go into, and that hole almost never spots at the horse you need. Yeah, so you've got horses one through seven. You've got to get specific holes for your specific horse, right? And the idea is that it's not just you're playing one game, right? So today in pinball, you put in your coin, you get three balls and some extra balls, and you play and you play and you play. This one is specifically designed that you've got to play it more than once to collectively put your card together. You need different numbers, different balls to continue to build your score.
    28:58
    Now, Steve Smith, he's also a big guru with Woodrail and Bingo. and also on that same podcast he says these were engineered to make money tying it back to where we first started here post-war era we need some entertainment these were gambling devices no way around it they were specifically designed to incentivize you to keep gambling there was almost there was some level of skill but it was not for amusement it was for return so how do you actually play a one ball game now this i'm probably going to get this wrong but we're trying our best here oh sure make me say the wrong thing you put a nickel in and you have a fourth selection to get a ball you get a random horse so if you bring the ball up and set it before the plunger you can put another nickel in and you can increase your odds but will also change your horse selection it was less about the single game and more about the multiple games together like slots so that's the thing is that you're you gotta play a bunch of games and it moves your odds around based on what you're playing now i am very are you are you a poker player no so i am not a lot of people in pinball are poker people because pinballs vary about mathematic and risk rewards and and odds and i i don't have the short-term brain capacity to be able to do that not really great at like mental math on the fly, stuff like that. These types of games really play to people who are very good at that. And I bet you if you're pretty good at poker or you enjoy poker, these type of games would really draw you in. What does Jeffrey Lawton say? He says, you got to remember, you get one ball. So if you're getting a good score every 20 nickels, you're doing okay. If you're getting a winning score every 10 nickels, you're on fire. If you're hitting the winning score every five nickels, you've achieved God status. This is Gene Simmons from KISS. I would like you to join the Patreon for Silver Ball Chronicles. Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Want to be as cool as KISS? Interested in having your comments and questions take priority in our episodes? Jump up to a $6 a month premium crony. And then go to kissonline.com. Stop that. We're not going to Kiss Online. Just finish up the damn list. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an Elie Litus clone. Maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Then afterwards, you can swing on over to kissonline.com.
    31:49
    There you go. So we're talking 20 games, 10 games, 5 games, right? Like, you've got to keep playing. When this is obviously a gambling device, that's when organized gambling became a problem in some establishments. This didn't go unnoticed by government officials with the decay and the moral collapse of society, which of course happened in the post-war era that everybody remembers. Those people were very concerned about organized crime because there was a lot of cash and a cash element as a part of these pinball machines. So if you've like banned alcohol or something like that, it's easy to take your black market cash and wash it or launder it through organized crime and a cash business, which this very much was. You remember the moral decay of children, our grandparents and great-grandparents? You remember that, right? They were just morally decayed. Yes. Terrible. Just like society today. I guess the weird part there was that children spent a lot of time in these establishments, and they were worried that these children would be affected by that. But I find it also very weird that it was okay for children to be in bars, but not to gamble in bars. so in the 1950s bingo sort of took off as a variant to the one ball game companies like pamco you remember pamco i remember pamco do you i don't know i just said that i figured we talked about in a previous episode maybe we did i can't remember but we did talk about western we everybody knows bally united some people know about united we spoke about them previously Williams?
    33:38
    Well, they all produced bingos. But it was really Bally and United that dominated the market. And this was led by Lynn Durant and Don Hooker. So this was a very close-knit industry. Coin op, everybody knew everybody. It's still like that, yes. We all see this competition between Jersey Jack and Stern or American Pinball and all this stuff. But, I mean, they all know each other. They all worked with each other. They all have good relationships or hurt feelings from years ago. Everybody knows everybody's business, and that's just the way it is. Stern would say it's not really competition, being they own most of the market. To be totally honest, it's not competition. That's why. They see the fact that they're building these machines. You're building your machines. We work in different markets. They're not throwing shade. That's just the way it is. So who's Lynn Durant? This one's fun. Lynn was an electrical engineer, and he was mostly self-taught. During the war, the war being the Second World War, Lynn worked with Harry Williams at Exhibit refurbishing games into new designs. So we spoke about this in the brief history of pinball, that Exhibit was building pinballs, but what they were doing is they were refurbishing games, mostly because you couldn't find a lot of those materials because they were going to the war effort. So you had to recycle the old materials to make something new. You'll also remember Lynn worked with Harry Williams on Contact from 1939. And that was the big deal, flipperless, five-ball game, really the predecessor to what we know today as pinball. Do you remember Contact? I remember Contact. Remember talking about that? Vaguely. Great story about the bell. You remember the bell? Adding the bell to Contact? Ron, just go back, listen to that brief history of Pinball Podcast. Hopefully, everybody else will be listening to it. I can't listen to the episodes. I'm on them. That would be weird.
    35:45
    Fill that ego, Ron. No. You're carrying that around in all those tournaments. Did you know Xzibit made many payout machines and flipperless games? Many were uncredited, but were often worked on by Lynn and Harry Williams. Yeah. So when you go to IPDB, there's a lot of issues that I have found kind of in this area, especially with Lynn, is that Lynn did a lot of the work on all of these machines, but he's not credited on the Internet Pinball database as working on some of those. I can't be 100% certain as to who's working on them, but it was often Lynn and Harry Williams. So a payout machine, that's really kind of like your one-ball, one-arm bandit kind of gambling machines. You pull in that kind of stuff that's literally a payout machine. And then flipperless games are more like kind of like bingo, the precursor to the flipper pinball machine. Now, Len Durant started working at Western, working on an EM slot machine to compete with this one-arm bandit type slot machine. wayne nions would say that he was a great electrical man but didn't last long at western under jimmy johnson who fired him do you remember jimmy johnson i remember yes i remember that episode huge character well worth the listen to listen to that one and i believe we spoke a lot about jimmy in the wayne nions episode now lynn durant would later become an engineer for united manufacturing company, and he would come up with a concept that was first to market, and that concept was the bingo machine. The design didn't catch on because the playfield created a style of play that was a little bit too random, but it was Bally, after looking at this machine, that would improve that concept immediately. Lynn focused on building up the automatic scoring shuffle alley machines for united after this do you remember shuffle alleys those oh yeah those old school em shuffle alleys must be really cool well they kept i mean united they kept making shuffle alleys under the united name for ever i remember playing one as a kid was it alley cats i thought i'm pretty sure that was united has all the cats on it so cool but like and i feel like where that's where it's got like the strings that bring the balls down and stuff because like it's just oh it's just so cool those old school em shuffle alleys and they're made with like they're made almost like a like a classic bowling alley with like these super fancy uh wood uh like alley i guess i guess for a lack of a better term right the the play field is is like an old uh basketball i just remember he had to put the powder on it he always had the powder stuff he had to put on it to get the uh puck to slide so cool all that stuff so cool uh lynn would finish out his career as president of united so he would work his way up through all these companies and eventually become the president of united and he very much modeled his career after raymond maloney and this is a name i don't think anybody knows which is why i've brought him up i've included his wikipedia page in the show notes ray is super important to pinball when god leaves baffle ball started to become popular Maloney tried to secure a steady supply of baffle ball cabinets for Midwest novelty. Frustrated with Gottlieb's inability to supply the machines quickly enough, Maloney decided to start producing pin games himself. Starting his company in December 1931, in 1932 he released Ballyhoo, with a price of $16.50 per machine, a relatively affordable price for operators at the time. The machine was a great success, selling 50,000 units in the first seven months, and becoming the name of his company. Yeah, exactly. This company would eventually become Bally, the big person in that. So Baffle Ball was that tabletop pin game where you pull the little plunger and the little ball goes up and it bounces off all the pins and into the holes, right? So that was kind of the start of that. Well, they couldn't make enough of those Baffle Ball machines, so Raymond created his own company, and he sold just as many of his machines. And Bally, who I think that was like a men's magazine or something? something i think something like that very cool here's an awesome quote from alvin gottlieb who is the son of david gottlieb he says ray maloney these guys were really strong personalities ray maloney did everything over bally he built electric razors he built television sets he manufactured ballpoint pens ray would build anything and everything he was a monumental supporter of inventors guys would come to him from all over the world with the weirdest things a lot of that stuff went into production at this time and in sort of in that era right it's like kind of the future and the excitement of the greatest next invention because of the investment in uh governments at the time in science and technology for kind of the the uh post war world war one era was like oh what exciting stuff can we create and then of course you know then the Second World War would break out. But another big name in here was Sam Ginsberg You remember him we spoke about him a little bit in our previous history of pinball a brief history of pinball episode Well, in 1931, Sam Ginsberg's brothers, who was Louis Ginsberg, David Ginsberg, and Meyer Ginsberg, founded Genco, which was the amusement manufacturer. Sam decided to enter the business after them by establishing Chicago Coin Machine Exchange. chicago coin this this company would become chicago coin machine company which would eventually become stern electronics huh when sam stern bought him yep yeah so they see we're drawing the lines here ron somehow and even in this episode we're driving up the value of your friggin stern machines so what does sam ginsburg think about lynn durant well sam says lynn durant was a damn fool a good mechanic good engineer young kid i think when he started refurbishing games he couldn't be more than 32 wow that was that was young then okay what he wanted to do more than anything in this world was to emulate ray maloney ray maloney was his king his god maloney drank well and that's what killed him and lynn they died about the same age a little bit of shade a little bit of shade from Sam Ginsberg. But that gives you some insight into this market, this kind of post-war 1930s fanciness that is the pinball industry or what would become the pinball industry. Lin was a sales guy through and through. So he learned that from Ray. He knew exactly what to do to boost sales. And the bingo game gave him an approximate profit of $300 per machine. Now a pin game at that time, so the older sort of style pin games, would only have a profit margin of $50 to $75 a game. So we can see that he has noticed that these new bingo games have more profit margin. They're larger, so they look like they cost more, so you can make them actually cost more to increase your profit margin. What does Sam Ginsberg say about Lynn Durant's sales tactics? Lynn learned everything from Ray. He had a big, long closet full of fur coats and anything you could think of. Cameras, anything. If you came in from Texas as a visitor or whatever, he'd say, here you take this to your wife yeah sketchy so what he's doing there right is he's building relationships through a reciprocating you know thing right you come over he's like i got these fur coats here thanks for coming up and looking at my my bingo machines take this fur coat back to your wife she'll enjoy it and then you get brownie points from your wife because that's what it's like in the 1930s and 40s you buy a machine from them or a couple of machines What about the other name, the other legend that we were told here, Don Hooker? Don Hooker was also a genius engineer, and he spent most of his time at Bally, where he would work in the engineering department, and he would refine the bingo machine for them. The play fields were a little bit different because they had spring steel, hidden lamps. It also had position posts where the ball would bounce around, and it had 25 different holes to trap the ball. The holes on the playfield would match the bingo cards on the back glass in a 5x5 grid. And this is from Nick Baldridge. He says, the first game from Bally, called Bright Lights, had six cards. Each card could be bought in order for one nickel. The game proved extremely popular and got around the primary issue with one balls. On the new bingo pinball, a player could win with only three of five balls played properly. You only had to line up three numbers on the card to win a small amount of replays. Four in a row earned about four times the amount for three. And five in a row earned 100 replays. Yeah, okay, so we're making the odds a little easier here. Is that what I'm getting? That's what you're getting. Okay, good. Okay, I understand this so far. So the reason what Bally figured out over the one balls and after they kind of looked at United's first bingo was how do I make it a little easier but also as exciting? And that was kind of refining the five by five grid of cards. So let's take a look at – well, actually, let's take a look at United's bingo first, and then we'll compare and contrast, okay? United's first bingo, and this is listed on IPDB, so I can't 100% confirm that this was actually the first one, but this is the first one listed on IPDB, so I'm going with this one. So if it was a 5x5 grid... It's called ABC, by the way. It's called ABC, yeah, it's very exciting.
    46:02
    This game is from March of 1951. It is literacy theme. We have unknown amount of units, and the designer is uncredited, although it was Lynn Durant. So when we're looking at the back glass, what are we looking at here? We're looking at bingo cards, three of them. Three bingo cards, A, B, and C, and they're kind of lined up in the shape of a three. And then when we look at the play field, what do we kind of see there? It's almost like a roulette wheel with holes in it. Yeah, it's like a roulette wheel. So you shoot the ball up around the arch, it goes into the roulette wheel, which is kind of spinning, and then you kind of fall into a number from 1 to 25, which then corresponds to the bingo card on the back glass. So how are we going to sell this one? Well, we're going to sell it with a flyer. United's ABC new different five-ball replay game. So no more one ball. We're going to give you five balls. And did you know it has fascinating bingo appeal? it has 180 scoring combinations on each card its top award is 200 replays play one two or three coins each game very fast play average game is 40 seconds that would be great for some pinball machines an average ball of 40 seconds that would be good yay but the thing was back with the kind of the one ball thing was kind of like that and it goes dink dink done and it's like three seconds Well, you can play for $0.05, $0.10, or $0.25.
    47:37
    Ooh, expensive. But that's kind of neat. It's kind of cool. So now let's contrast that to the, I would say, much better Bally's bright lights. So we click on that one. As you say that, having not played any of these. We have no idea. You're just going to go by the picture. It looks cooler. I'm flying blind here, guys. I really am. I'm trying my best. So bright lights we have. So it's a cabaret theme. This is March of 51. So you got six cards instead of three cards. This is exciting. There's a lot going on here. Yep. Right? Five by five. It starts going over my head. Yeah. Now I have no idea what's going on. Look at the instruction cards. Yeah. Okay. So on IPDB, there's a set of instruction cards here. Old school instruction cards. Wait for score to register is the first one. So then it's got, oh, God. Okay. So five balls for 10 cents. First, deposit one to six coins to select the desired skill selection. They literally have six different score cards, probably depending on how you set it up. Exactly. So the first coin selects the first selection. Each additional coin selects the next selection. This is reading like stereo instructions. Then, shoot five balls to light the score. It says push knob under shooter to raise the ball to the play field. For amusement only, no prizes or gambling. So let's just pick one of these scorecards. Let's just choose the first one. So go ahead and read that one. Any adjoining three in a line, four. I guess it means, what does that mean, four credits? That must be, yeah, it must be four replays. Horizontal vertical diagonal tied together by white line. Only one three in line per section scores. Okay. I think I get that. Any adjoining four in a line, 32 credits. Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, tied together by white line. Any adjoining five in a line, 100.
    49:39
    Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, tied together by white line. Score must be in a selected section. Only high scores in each section. Score void if tilted game. Okay, so I don't... And that's one of six cards. So I assume that's just operator selectable. How many credits do you want to give out? Okay, so I think I know what's going on here. You plunge the ball. You got five balls. You got to get it in the hole. So then when we look at this, we got 25 different holes. So there's not a roulette wheel in the play field. The play field is a bunch of holes, 1 through 7, 8 through 13, 14 through 18, 19 to 22, and 23 to 25. and it gets kind of, it's sort of like a funnel towards the bottom. There's posts everywhere, and this is all going to be, how hard do you plunge and nudging? Yeah, plunging, nudging, trying to get it down, avoid. It seems kind of fun, actually, right? Kind of like it's all about like, oh, I got to get it down to the 20. Well, I got to get it through three rows of death and try to get it into the 20, which seems really hard. I guarantee you there's people who could master this. back glass art kind of fun but the cards seem really confusing okay that's exciting stuff so you can see the different you can see why kind of the abc united bingo thing you're not quite as exciting because it doesn't exist in there that would be a picture of inside oh yeah oh man imagine what the back box yes hey that's that's when i saw bingo and it scared me like oh my god yeah they went to the moon on that technology that scares the crap i would say bingo is probably or EM technology, EM amusement technology taken to its highest possible level. So United would launch its next bingo style game, 3-4-5, which is, I guess, like ABC, which was a two card back glass instead of the six card back glass. United and Durant had their designs mostly mirror that of Bally's after a little while. So when production started to ramp up, they realized that Bally had figured it out.
    51:52
    Bingos added more complexity over the years. So as bingo kind of continued on, it added more complexity. So not only did the bingo cards have six of them on the back last, some of those bingo cards like rotated. So you could like rotate them left to right or you could turn them. So they would kind of spin in a circle. It was really confusing. Then they would add buy-in options. so you could add more credits after you started to play, and you would even get player-controlled kickouts that if you didn't want to be in a certain spot, you could kick it out to kind of hopefully get it further down the playfield.
    52:29
    Huh? Mm-hmm. You going out to get a bingo? They're really heavy and huge, and they scare me. This seems like the kind of game that Zach from your other podcast... Oh, you mean my other podcast, the Slamtail podcast? Yes. That's right. This seems like right up his alley. He probably would consider it boring or something. Because he's like the Soren of EM games, right? Where he can make his own code. Yeah, that's kind of his nickname. So, I mean, this seems like... I would love to know, in the next episode of the Slam Tilt podcast, your other podcast with your other host, Bruce Nightingale, you should ask him why he's not into bingo. He probably wouldn't like his answer. He'd be like, I don't know, just don't like it. Pretty much.
    53:15
    Yeah. It was in 1951 where everything changed. So they were selling a boatload of these games, right? They were all coming out every couple of months with a whole new one, and they were selling thousands. In 1951, we spoke about this previously, it became the Johnson Act, which was the big boogeyman. And this was to tamp down on gambling devices. Now, it wasn't to outlaw gambling devices altogether. Rather, it was the transportation of those gambling devices from one state to another, so crossing state lines. The Johnson Act was amended several times in the convening years, and most notably, the act makes it unlawful to transport those games. So if you're building them in a Chicago area and you're trying to get that to New York or upstate or New York City or Ohio, it's not happening. You can't get it across state lines. And this basically made one-ball games illegal because they were now deemed a gambling device.
    54:22
    Bally was the first to switch gears with the new legislation. And in 1963, there was some revisions to the Johnson Act, which carved out flipper games and further tightened the noose around bingo games. they had to change the way that they were designed they had to become more skill-based if you will and less gambling so how about bally's hi-fi this is a cool one from 1954 so this one's sort of one of those more or less quote-unquote redesign style games like don hooker don hooker right what does this back glass look like so it doesn't have six cards it's got one card in the middle and then on the bottom left and bottom right it's got two, three cards. This is when they start getting more and more complicated. Then they have other boxes with other options, other features. Ron, all of these have lights behind them. All of these lights correspond to holes, just holes in a play field. And then it has to figure out the math behind those lights.
    55:31
    I don't get any of it. Hey Pinheads, I just wanted to let you know that when I'm not doing this podcast and making bad jokes, I'm Dave the Financial Guy. At Dennis Financial, our advisors strive to provide a return on life for our clients, not just a return on investment. The value of advice is something that we take very seriously. A valuable advisor doesn't just provide investment advice. They share wisdom. And this is where the true value of an advisor emerges. Don't take my word for it. Just listen to Ron Sterling, an average Canadian. Yay. If you're in Canada, Dennis Financial is for you. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial, Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. We're also doing secure online video meetings. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our Value of Advice e-book, or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial, Inc. Canadian residents only. So let's take a look at the flyer. Flyers are starting to look cooler. Yeah, the flyers are more salesy, more markety.
    56:45
    Bally Hi-Fi. Famous inline features plus new exciting skill action. I don't know if the news guy really works as well.
    56:55
    You don't think so? This is all I got, Ron. You got all those fun names. Now, inline scoring is more thrilling than ever, earns more money than ever, thanks to the new bump feature. in capitals, B-U-M-P. Bump! Electronically operated, the new belly bump mechanism eliminates player fatigue caused by hand operated devices and gives more action and skill control. Do you hear that, Johnson Act? Skill. Smooth and quiet in operation, bump feature gets immediate extra play and profit. Get on in the ground floor of this 1954 bumper boom. Get Hi-Fi on location now. Wow, bump. So we talked also about how confusing that back glass was. So there's inline scores, which are like the back glass. Oh, wait a minute. Is the bump button basically to knock the ball out of the hole to another hole? No, it's even better than that. We'll get to that in a second. Then we got corner scores, got advancing scores. We got select a spot, extra time, extra balls, super card, and spot rollovers. I have no idea what most of those are when it comes to bingo. but let's take a look at the play field you're talking about the bump feature and that's why this game is because it says it's at the bump button on the side of the cabinet you push a thing and it has player controlled i don't know uh bumpers pop pop bumper kind of things so when the ball gets closer you hit the button and it'll bump the ball it'll bump it up the play field So what you're saying is it's the action button before the action button. It is the Teolus button of the 1950s. So once again, a feature you thought was new, they were doing it in the 50s in an EM. It's cool. So let's talk a little bit further about the bumper.
    58:46
    Butch Glotta, who is also known as Bingo Butch, is a huge collector in the bingo community. He's got some insight to the bumper. he says i gotta admit my friends didn't like high five because they could never figure out the bumper it takes years of practice of playing these to get it down pat i remember one time i needed the four i timed it perfect the ball came down i used three or four bumps i bumped the bowl up like on the top of the 11 then i bumped it some more and it went right into the four no kidding that was one i brag about it was so exciting that after all these years Butch still talks about that one time Where he used the bumper To get it in To the floor I kid It's weird To get that excited about this thing Do you remember the time That you were able to destroy the ring I guess this is Kind of the same thing Actually the first time I got to destroy the ring I think it broke on me Or didn't work The second time it didn't register, the third time something went wrong also. And I think the fourth time it finally worked. I have bad luck with machines breaking on me. I was one shot away. I just had to shoot the ramp into the ring. That's all I had to do. And I bricked it three times off the spinner. And then once off of the post that's next to Balrog. What does that have to do with bingos? Yes. Miami Beach. That's sort of the next kind of fun one. that people bring up in the podcasts here. It's a beach theme. Everybody loves the beach, but it's Miami Beach. And this is before, like, 1980s Don Johnson cocaine Miami Beach. Right? This is, like, classy 1950s. Yeah, we haven't even gotten to reels yet when it really gets complicated. We're still on lit back box lighting. So what do we see here on this back box? Lots of text and instructions. So confusing. But the card, it's not a 5x5 card. It's a 5x9 card.
    61:07
    And then it has like a weird 4 card and another 4 card and bottom 4 card. I'm counting 5x5. So there's a guide or there's a shade. Oh a back box mechanism that reveals More of the car goodness So as you kind of plan you can reveal more of the card And let look at the flyer Amazing new magic card Grows bigger and bigger and bigger! So do operators earnings! Super X! Wow, boost 3 in line to 5 in line! Red and yellow super lines! Boost 3 in a line to 4 in a line! Even then everything was super. spot x corner score 100 or 300 advancing scars extra balls miami beach bye it is untouchables what no that's it what about this wow peek behind the magic curtain wow okay well that's from the time that's this is from this is from that exact same flight this is the opposite side of that flyer basically they have a naked woman behind a curtain yes so what we're talking about here is when you would go to the beach you would you would you would be wearing your sunday best and then you would go into uh like a changing booth if you would and you would pull the curtain in front and then you would change into your bathing suit and you would open the curtain and come out in your head-to-toe bathing suit covering all of your but how is this allowed this is the 50s how is this an advertisement this is the precursor to side boob uh she's nude it's one of those like but her arm is in the way uh yeah but she's nude yeah wow you can see the curve in her hip in this picture i'm shocked that they were able to get although it is bally so if anyone was gonna do yeah it's totally bally so then there's another flyer here that outlines kind of how the how this card this this growing card will increase your earnings and is a big money making feature uh really cool really cool this is uh august of 55 don hooker again well how do you actually play it so we kind of see it but how do you play it well bingo butch says on most bingos you play number one and number seven it's like 13 and eight real real easy so on miami beach you just pull a plunger back and you shoot it and let it go and it'll go boom right into the one so you have to have select the number lit too when you have greens three scores five and then you get number one Then you've got 5, 12, 13, and 24. It's a five in a line. Four numbers. You have four balls to get any one of them for five in a line. To me, that's super. I hope those listening understand what's going on. I don't understand. I'm not a slot machine person. So I've been to a casino a couple of times. This isn't a slot machine. It's a bingo. Yeah, but it's slot machines. you're always like, you need to get the something five in a row on this line, and the line, and there's an X, and then a circle, and a square. I don't get any of that stuff, but you can see that this is the same thing.
    64:45
    It's five in a line, four in a line. It's all about plunging the ball on Miami Beach, and I guess all of the other similar games of this time, going up the play field into that top arch. It bounces left to right. and then you've got to nudge it into one of the correct 25 holes. You put it into one of those 25 holes, and then that sort of sets up your options for the next ball. Does that make sense? Okay.
    65:14
    So then, okay, oh, I've got it in the one. And if I look at the back glass, okay, the back glass, the one is right in the center. That's like your number one.
    65:27
    And it's in the upper right. So you got those two spots. So then you're like, okay, that means I need a three and eight or 11 to get five in a row. So then I got to look at the play field and go, okay, where's the, where's the, where's the three, the five and the 11. Right. So then I got to, oh, that's what those, I need the three and the five or the 11. So then that's kind of where, and I see where the lure of these machines comes from, because then it becomes a little bit less, I need to shoot the ramp three times to start a mode to stack with a multiball, and more to do with, I just got to nudge it just one little bit. And then instead of getting it in the three, you get it in the six, and you're like, no, it's the end of the world. Well, then the flipper folk started to notice some of the ideas in bingo and started to steal some of those ideas. What does Nick Baldridge say about that? All of the bingos are marvels of engineering. Mechanical computers with randomization built in through the use of clutches, drag arms, and timers. Designed to operate with a minimum of downtime for long periods of time with rough play. Many of the anti-cheat mechanisms and more robust amusement pinball mechanisms were born from these gambling pinballs. And we have Lynn Durant and Don Hooker, two engineering powerhouses to thank. Well, how about on the flipper side? So when we're talking about somebody who is the god of flipper pinball machines at this time, Wayne Nyans, what does he say? Companies copied each other's designs and ideas before they had a chance to ship it out of town. The only games I've ever looked at were bingo games. I love to look at bingo games. I love the circuitry of bingo games. The reflex unit and all that kind of stuff is intriguing to me. But I never looked at like a Williams game. I didn't want to start thinking like them. Yeah, so Wayne is trying to say, well, what can I learn from bingos that I can implement into flipper games? But I don't want to look at other flipper games because I don't want my flipper games to look like theirs. He wanted to add engineering complexity, and bingo was where you went to. Well, we talked about these six-card games. Nick Baldrige has a good point here at six-card games.
    67:36
    I'm sorry, six-card games. With a six-card, you know exactly what your goal is at any given time for each ball. It's pretty simple. You just have to know which number you need to make. Usually there's a couple that will get you a good result, at least three. So it's a little easier for someone who's intimidated by all the features. Oh, that sounds like it's for me. Yeah, that's the one for you. You're easily intimidated by all the haters. You're just like, no, I just want to play Godzilla where I get rewarded for everything. The circuit board was game specific and would recognize a ball in the hole by as little as 0.2 volts. How wild is that? These things are complicated. So complicated. Wait a second. So we just talked about Wayne Nyans. Wayne Nyans worked at Gottlieb. Yeah, why aren't they making bingos? They make more money than flipper games, right? Totally. So in the early 1950s, bingo and these gambling machines were taken off, and five-ball games were really suffering. You know, you remember years ago they invented the flipper. Humpty Dumpty. And that evolved into more of the game of skill kind of things. Those were considered five-ball games, and they were really suffering compared to these bingo and gambling. Well, Alvin Gottlieb, who is the son of David Gottlieb, the creator of Gottlieb, what does he say? He says, David Gottlieb's point of view was that he just wanted to be strictly in the amusement game business. Gambling was not of interest to him at all. He wanted to be able to provide, in his own words, amusement for the populace at a very low price. We tried to make a couple of games that were games of chance, but his heart wasn't in it. It was more or less to maintain competitiveness. He didn't enjoy it at all. I was in the engineering department one day, and he came in and told us that that was the end of our attempt to get into that business at all. From then on, it was strictly amusement games.
    69:29
    Yeah, so I'm working on a future episode about the Gottliebs, David Gottlieb. He had a very high kind of moral standing. You know, he didn't like the idea of gambling and games of chance. They half-assed it for a little bit, and then he just said, nope, that's it. We're done. And in the end, it actually probably would have proved to be a good idea because they didn't put all their eggs in that gambling basket. And then when kind of everything collapsed with the Johnson Act and a few other things, they weren't really caught up in that.
    70:00
    But Alvin does know that bingo does have its appeal. Alvin Gottlieb says, in 1949, United was building shuffle alleys. In the early 50s, the bingo pinball machine came along and the flipper business just about died. In fact, the whole flipper machine business was about gone because the bingo machines are running rampant all over the country and territories are being closed up left and right all over the place. In 1956, there was a case which interpreted the bingo machine was seen as being so-called slot machines and coming over the $250 gambling tax. This is what we're seeing, right, is people, lawmakers and people at the time were sitting around and then all of a sudden these bingo gambling machines were everywhere. That's what prompted the Johnson Act. And that's what prompted all those things to say, oh, my goodness, we need to slow this down. The Gottliebs noticed this. They're like, whoa, what's so attractive about these bingo machines, Ron? Well, I don't get it. I mean, to me, they're attractive from the mechanical aspect. They're so complicated. It's just it's exciting to figure out what the heck is going on in there to make this work. when I first got into pinball I put up a Facebook ad that was like I will buy your old pinball machine as stab in the dark and one gentleman reached out to me one time he's like I've got this bingo machine and I looked it up and this is when I was in the hobby for I don't know like a month and I look it up and I'm like on IPDB and I'm like what the hell is this thing and it was a bingo and I'm like oh you know that's gonna be really freaking heavy it's worth maybe like 200 bucks is it going to be worth it to go and get it and figure out how to friggin clean all these contacts and how does the motors work i had no time for that so i was like no i'll pass on it but then this guy told me about this bingo machine this this old pinball machine he's like this machine was it you know was in the clubhouse at the beach and in the 1950s and 60s we played this thing forever and all the kids were around it it was so much fun and we were betting on it and gambling on it it was so much fun and then kind of 20 years later he found that exact same machine at a yard sale and he bought it and he put it in his basement because he remembers the nostalgia from when he was a kid i thought that was an amazing story um it's funny that a bunch of kids were gambling on this machine which is obviously the problem that they had but it had and it was ruining the youth it was ruining the youth nick baldridge knows the allure nick says there are several aspects of playing a bingo pinball machine that really attract players the risk of reward of how many coins to play in the betting phase the constantly changing goals and reaching a point in the game where you have two sets two sets of two in a row with a single number in between with only one number needed you have to make your shot otherwise you get nothing you got to choose which one you got two options right do i go for the 13 or the 20 you know which one's easier to get to? Do I go for the three or the five? They're so close together. There's one in the middle. What do I do? Ah, I get it. I get it. I haven't played one, but I get it. Now a guest on For Amusement Only is Phil Bomega. He would say, I was always kind of a numbers guy. I always liked to pay attention to probability and things like that. When I was a kid, I'd make games up with dice and I knew all the probabilities of dice and made money. So there you go. Right, Ron? It's probabilities. It's mathematics. It's excitement. So if you're the kind of pinball player that loves kind of math, that loves risk-reward on a level that is a little bit slower than high-flow pinball today, give bingo a chance. By golly, give it a chance. What do you think? Would you give it a chance? I say give everything a chance. Give it a chance. Don't. Oh, my God. No.
    74:01
    No. No? All right. This EM technology used in one ball, bingo, and then electromechanical flipper pinball, it's dying out, right? We're kind of losing a piece of that history, I think, now. Technology when it comes to boards, the availability of new pinball machines and the complexity of those new pinball machines, I feel like we're losing a lot of this. There's fewer and fewer people who know how to fix this stuff. Yeah, they're complicated. They're not impossible, but they're hard to do. Well, Jeffrey Lawton is one of those individuals that's trying to keep it alive. A whole lot of people aren't interested in it today. Nobody's taking the time to understand electromechanical technology. It's kind of a shame. It's literally a dead art. I have customers that are graduate electrical engineers that have electromechanical machines, and they call me pretty wild another uh guest is hugh cohen and uh he was on uh he's a big bingo repair individual he says i had a guy from belgium come over here and he stayed with me twice for two weeks just to learn how to repair these games we're losing this part of our pinball history because it's just so much time has passed a lot of people are like a bingo is boring there's no ramps there's no flippers there's why would i spend my time well it's a niche right it's something within this great hobby of pinball and we're losing out on part of that well i have to say nick baldridge has actually spent some time developing his own homebrew multi bingo machine and that's well worth it to look if you check out uh his pin side thread on that if you check out his website for amusement only, you can check out his multi-bingo machine, which is kind of like a virtual pinball machine that has all these old bingos on them. In addition, Nick has also worked on a lot of visual pinball games, so you can play some of these games in visual pinball, and you can learn them, so you don't have to know the technology that is electromechanical. It loses some of the romance, but it's at least keeping that part of the hobby alive. And you know what? Tip of the hat to Nick Baldrige for doing that. Jim, any final thoughts, Ron?
    76:25
    I feel like I should say something. Something profound. We need something profound. These games are really complicated. But to be fair, I'm confused easily. And we have a quote here from Vic Camp. And I was at Vic's house for one of his parties. And he had, he collects mostly single player, like, Gottlieb Wedgeheads. And he had that. Kind of like wood rails and stuff, too? Most of them are, like, 60s, 50s, 60s and up. Yeah, there's some wood rails in there. But he had in his, and I know things have moved around in his collection since then, but I think the garage area, he had all the bingos, like, all in a row. And I remember he was explaining one of them, like, the rules. and within the first like 30 seconds i was totally lost yeah you gotta kind of play yeah you gotta figure it out and yeah you gotta got it so vick vick says these games are sophisticated you need to study the layout play a lot of games just like anything else in life to get good you need to dedicate time and focus and you'll become a better player and enjoy the game more that'll fuel you to becoming a better player just like anything you can do in anything in life bingos need that you really need to dedicate time to these games. It's not like a flipper game. You're whacking the ball around. You're shooting for a target once in a while. Bengals are the opposite. You're on top of the ball, controlling that ball all the time. You're always moving. That ball's just rolling down the play field. There's no pop-up bumpers hitting it anywhere. There's no ricochets, no kick-out holes, no drop targets. It's just you and the ball. Very good, Vic. It's just you in the ball.
    78:00
    That was his interview on For Amusement Only, Vic Camp. Amazing. One of the best ones I've ever heard. He gets so philosophical. And did he say, as you can see, that's like his line, he'd say that all the time. You know, look at this, as you can see, as you can see. But yes, he does have a slight, you know, you can tell he's from the northeast section of the country. I just remember, yeah, he's Jersey, so his jukebox, he had a lot of four season stuff on there. I'm like, of course, That makes perfect sense in a lot of doo-wop. And now, like, yep, that makes sense. Very good. Is that very New Jersey doo-wop stuff? Yeah. What do you think all these bands? The Jersey Boys. Four Seasons. Oh, I see. You know? Sherry, Sherry, baby. You know, that kind of stuff. Wow. I do. Walk like a man, fast as I can. I was more of a Roy Orbison kind of guy. Yeah, he's definitely not Northeast.
    78:57
    Stewie, get over here. Oh, I just got off. It's like almost noon, Stewie. I'm a baby. What do you want? Okay. As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to civilballprotocols at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast show. You can't just do a... I literally say things every single episode. You can't just record this and... Whatever. Please subscribe. I already said that. Turn on automatic download so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review. That way more people can find us.
    79:51
    Join us on Patreon to support the show. And it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Do you know what Discord is? Jump on! It's a $6 a month premium crony. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an elite-est crony. Maybe you just want a t-shirt? Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silverball Chronicles t-shirt. Be sure to get the one that says Ron's name first.
    80:25
    great good stuff okay that i think that turned out better than i expected i can't believe that flyer so butch what is butch's last name so butch gouda he is gl it says so i would think that'd be gliding a lot of yes right glada okay my throat is killing me it's allergies oh my What do you say there, Tom? How'd you hit him? Boy, I'll tell you what, Dusty. I felt like a one-legged cat trying to bury turds on a frozen pond.
    81:03
    So what the hell are you doing up here? Hell, I'm completely out of balls. I lost every damn one of them. Craziest thing I ever saw.
    81:15
    Beavis is one of my favorite lines. Because he always has the best lines. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to be watching the Imola Grand Prix.
    81:41
    The Imola from Maggio Gucci Grand Prix. Do I have any final thoughts? Wow, I'm spacing out here. You definitely have to see the flyer for Miami Beach. No.