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When you travel well, your KLM Royal Dutch Airlines ticket takes you to more than just your destination. It takes you to front row views, voices lost in the music, and new shared memories. And when the last song fades, the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crew is here to ensure your journey home hits all the right notes. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. When you travel, travel well. 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 gonna do the 1920s guy no 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. Teletasweeney. 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. How much have you been playing pinball? A little bit. A little bit of Elton John? Mm-hmm. Very nice. A 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. I love it. 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. Everybody's always shooting everybody in the head. 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 Elliot Eismin, 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? You don't have any locations that would have that? Absolutely not. Really? They're everywhere. I live in a pinball desert here in eastern Canada. It's quite depressing. The one that I'm very excited for, though, So Funhaus 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. already. You got a weird accent. It just throws me off. Here we go. The show notes got all these weird misspellings, all these extra U's everywhere. 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. We're getting through. We're kind of in that post-pandemic, I think, era now. It's very nice to see things kind of becoming a little more normal in pinball, a little more exciting. 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 stick it 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. OK. 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 have fun hearing his impressions and knowledge in person. 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. 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 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, Ron, you're holding the flag for Silver Ball Chronicles. That flag, of course, has Ron's name first on it. I played Ben's really loud and obnoxious Batman forever. Oh, okay. That's a cool one. multiball, multiball, multiball. 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 moments of – 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. 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. 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 pin side 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 hit that I didn't see? It's probably made by the Italians. For example, John Papadiuk 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 little container 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 because it talks about Krull. If we're switching back and forth, it's your turn. Oh, no, no. I want you to do this one 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. 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 took over two years you can check out that pin side 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 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory from the 1970s or whatever. There's a teacher character in there, and he's the teacher, and he's telling them, oh, 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 Krull as one of the main characters. And every time I see Willy 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 when i think of crawl i think of the the thingy the the thingy that they throw the disc thing yeah that yeah 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 that is 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. 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 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 bingo just isn't the game you can play at the county fair or a sketchy gambling establishment bingo is also the big brother 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 figured that bingo actually needs its own episode. I mean, come on. We gave Roger Sharp two friggin' episodes. Why can't we give bingo one? I agree. Now, have you ever played bingo? I've played bingo, but I haven't played bingo. Uh. Like, I haven't played a bingo machine, like, of the pinball variant. Ah. But I've played the game where it's, you know, B10. Yes. And you stamp it. I played that once with 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 there's bingo. Bingo was for old ladies. That's basically the majority of people playing bingo. And they'd have, like my aunt, she would have ten of the cards like she would get. And she's like, did she have her own stamp? Oh, yeah. She had her little stamper. Oh, she had the stamp. 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 Fun Spot in New Hampshire, one of the largest arcades out there, there's a bingo right next to the main building. Yeah, and that's when you get, like, when you're at that thing, that's when, okay, well, let's talk about bingo machines. Oh, bingo machines, yes. 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 – I have zero experience with bingo machines. I probably have 5% experience. 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 Nicholas 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. 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. 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 Nicholas Baldridge have you met nick maybe i don't He seems like the nicest guy. Probably in a seminar he did. 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 Baltridge. 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 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. 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 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 Vic Camp and if you could have a super New York accent that would be great I believe Vic is from New Jersey so I don know why Unless you just going to say they all the same Let's see. For me, you really wanted me to do like, you know, for me, playing on route was so exciting. To make these numbers. Exactly. No, I'm not doing that. 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. So there's terms here I don't even know. It's got its own language, and it's exciting. Now, usually these one-ball 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. uh craig smallish a one ball collector began actively collecting wood rails in late 2012 now he ended up following e falling even deeper into a niche of horse race games after a couple of years in 2014 now these are individuals that i'm that have been on the for amusement only podcast which is where i'm pulling a lot of these quotes 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 uh 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. I worked on that. Steve Kornick would have been proud of you. Thank you, Steve. 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 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 – I see cool horse artwork. Horses everywhere. Yeah, it is very, very cool. But this is really 1930s looking, right? Like really old school 1930s. Like this 1930s game really looks like a 1930s game. Now, this has a billboard ad. It doesn't have a flyer. Do you want to read this one, Ron? Let's see. It's a mighty busy place filling orders. 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. So $74.50 for some reason. Okay. Maybe you can talk him down to 74. I don't know. These things were flying off the shelves back then, Ron. It's pretty cool. Check out IPDB and take a look at this. 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. 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. He turned it down. It's got a shamrock on it. Yeah, of course. His lucky Irish gimmick. Right. 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. The play field, when we look at that, that is also really interesting. and it is 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 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? I don't. Well, this year's not over yet, so it'll probably be last year. But that's interesting. So Seabiscuit was at the height of its 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 Bally as well, a one-ball game, looks very similar, win, play, show, purse, one through seven. Really exciting back glass, right? It's classy. It's old. It really pulls on those, I wouldn't want to say nostalgia things, but this antique-y kind of artistic stuff. Now, when we look at the pinball machine or the one ball machine by itself, look at the size of this thing. Well, the cabinet 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 it looks like in the photo here on IPDB, it looks like an old Toyota or something in the background. Pretty cool stuff. All right. Yeah, so that's kind of cool. 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 Lawton, 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. 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 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 four 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 got to play a bunch of games and it moves your odds around based on what you're playing. Now, I am very – are you a poker player? No. So I am not. A lot of people in pinball are poker people because pinball is very about mathematic and risk rewards and odds. And 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. be a clone and then go to kiss online 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 twenty dollars a month as an ellie letus clone maybe you just want a shirt i understand swing on over to silverball swag.com and pick up a silver ball chronicles t-shirt then afterwards you can swing on over to kissonline.com. There you go. So we're talking 20 games, 10 games, 5 games, right? Like, you gotta 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 i don't know maybe we did i can't remember but we did talk about western we everybody knows valley united some people know about united we spoke about them previously Williams? 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. Like it's everybody knows everybody's business. And that's just the way it is. And Stern would say it's not really competition being they own most of the 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. It's just that's just the way it is. So who's Linda Rand? 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. 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. 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 Nyans 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? Him I remember, yes. I remember that Gottlieb episode. Huge character. Well worth the listen to listen to that one. And I believe we spoke a lot about Jimmy in the Wayne Nyans 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 play field 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 Alley? Oh, yeah. Those old-school EM Shuffle Alleys must be really cool. Well, they kept making Shuffle Alleys under the United name forever. I remember playing one as a kid. Was it Alley Cats? I'm pretty sure that was United. It has all the cats on it. So cool. And I feel like that's where it's got the strings that bring the balls down and stuff. Because 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 wood like alley, I guess, for lack of a better term. Right. The the play field is is like an old 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 puck to slide. So cool. All that stuff. So cool. 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 Gottlieb's baffle ball started to become popular, Maloney tried to secure a steady supply of baffle ball cabinets for Midwest novelty. Frustrating 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 Ballyhoo, I think that was like a men's magazine or something. 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 Bali. 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 sort of in that era, it's like kind of the future and the excitement of the greatest next invention because of the investment in governments at the time in science and technology for kind of the post War I era was like ooh what exciting stuff can we create And 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. This company would become Chicago Coin Machine Company, which would eventually become Stern Electronics. When Sam Stern bought them, yeah. Yeah, so they see we're drawing the lines here, Ron. And somehow, even in this episode, we're driving up the value of your frigging Stern machines. So what does Sam Ginsberg 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 young? 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. Lynn was a sales guy through and through. See, 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, ah, I got these fur coats here. Thanks for coming up and looking at 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 him 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 playfields 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 play field would match the bingo cards on the back glass in a five by five grid and this is from Nicholas 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 that's okay good okay i understand this so far so the reason bal 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 five by five grid. It's called ABC, by the way. It's called ABC. Yeah, it's very exciting. 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 what like when we're looking at the 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 one 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 ah and it goes dink dink done and it's like three seconds well you can play for five cents 10 cents or 25 cents oh 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 as you say that having not played any of these we have no idea you're just gonna go by the picture it looks cooler i'm flying blind here guys i really am i'm trying the bright lights we have so there'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 starts going over my head yeah now I have no idea what's going on. Look at the instruction cards. Yeah, okay. 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 ten 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 score cards. 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 reports. Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, tied together by white line. Only one three in line per section scores. Okay. 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. it horizontal vertical diagonal tied together by white line score must be in a selected section only high scores in each section score void of tilted game okay so i don't that's one of six cards so i assume that's just operator selectable how many credits 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 gotta get it in the So then when we look at this, we've 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's sort of like a funnel towards the ball. 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. Backglass 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 is not quite as exciting. You didn't see the best picture because it doesn't exist in there. That would be a picture of inside. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Imagine what the backbox looks like. That's when I saw bingos, and it scared me. Like, oh, my God. Yeah. They went to the moon on that technology. That scares the crap out of me. I would say bingos probably are 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. 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 or you could turn them so they 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 play field huh you got it you're going out to get a bingo they're really heavy and huge and they scare me does uh this seems like the kind of game that zach from uh your other podcast oh you mean my my other pot you the slam tell 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. We probably wouldn't like his answer. He'd be like, I don't know, just don't like it. Pretty much. You know, 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. 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 was sort of one of those more or less quote-unquote redesigned 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. 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. Bally Hi-Fi. Famous inline features plus new exciting skill action. I don't know if the news guy really works as well. 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. 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 four. To the four. I kid, right? It's weird, right, to get that excited about this thing. Do you remember the time that you, you know, were able to destroy the ring? I guess this is kind of the same thing, you know? 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? Bingoes. 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. 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 backbox lighting. So what do we see here on this backbox? Lots of text and instructions. So confusing. But the card, it's not a 5x5 card. It's a 5x9 card. 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. a backbox mechanism that reveals more of the card. Oh, my goodness. So as you kind of plan, you can reveal more of the card. And let's look at the flyer. Amazing new magic card grows bigger and bigger and bigger. So do operators earnings. Super X. Wow. Boost three in line to five in line. Red and yellow, super lines. Boost three in a line to four in a line Even then everything was super Select a spot X corner score 100 or 300 Advancing scores extra balls Miami Beach, bye-bye. It is untouchables. No, that's it. What about this? Wow. Peek behind the magic curtain. Wow, okay. Well, that's from the time? 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 be wearing your Sunday best. And then you would go into 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. She's nude. It's one of those like... But her arm is in the way. 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 this. Although it is ballet. So if anyone was going to do it, yeah, it's totally Bally. So then there's another flyer here that outlines kind of how this card, this growing card, will increase your earnings and is a big money-making feature. Really cool. Really cool. This is 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 select the number that, too. When you have greens, three scores five. And then you get number one. Then you've got five, 12, 13, and 24. It's a five in 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 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, like, I don't get any of that stuff, but you can see that this is the same thing. It's five and a line, four and 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 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 so then this 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 it's also the number one that's 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, uh, the lure of these machines comes from. Cause 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 Nicholas 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 was 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-ball games. Six-card games. I'm sorry, six-card games. With a six-card, you know exactly what your goal is at any given time for each ball. 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 you're easily intimidated by all the features you're just like no i just want to play godzilla where i get rewarded for every circuit board was game specific and would recognize a ball in the hold by as little as 0.2 volts how wild is that these things are complicated so complicated well 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. Yeah, so I'm working on a future episode about the Gottliebs and David Gottlieb. He had a very high kind of moral standing. 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. 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. It's funny that a bunch of kids were gambling on this machine, which is obviously the problem that they had, but it had an allure. It was ruining the youth. It was ruining the youth. Nicholas 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've got to choose which one. You've 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 3 or the 5? If 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. Oh, my God. No. 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 guest is Hugh Cohen, and 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, 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, Nicholas 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 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. Do you have any final thoughts, Ron? 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 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 in 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 You got it, got it. So Vic 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. Bingos are the opposite. it. 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 uppers 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 and the ball. 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 you see that all the time you know like look at this as you can see as you can see as you could see but yes he does have a slight you know you could tell he's from the uh northeast section of the country i just remember yeah he's jersey so he his his jukebox he had a lot of four season stuff on there i'm like of course that makes perfect sense and a lot of doo-wop and that like yep that makes sense very good is that very new jersey doo-wop stuff yeah well you think all these fancy. 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. Stewie, get over here. Oh. I just got up. 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 SaveableChronicles at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcatcher. You can't just do a... I literally say the same 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. 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 six dollar a month premium crony want all the other perks and a shirt after three months join us at twenty dollars a month as an elite is crony maybe you just want a t-shirt swing on over to silverball swag.com and pick up a silver ball chronicles t-shirt be sure to get the one that says ron's name first great good stuff okay that's 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 glider yeah that's right glider 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 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 your money in the pro shop no here beavis is one of my favorite lines. Because he always has the best lines. Hey, now, wait a minute. These look kind of familiar. Many balls look the same, sir. Yeah. I have two that are identical. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to be watching the Imola Grand Prix. 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. The new gum health hero is here from Paradontax, the experts in gum care. Paradontax gums strengthen and protect, strengthens the gum seal by killing plaque bacteria along the gum line for a stronger and tighter seal between the gums and teeth. Clinically proven to reduce bleeding. And now with hyaluronic acid for foaming action. Brush and rinse twice daily to protect against plaque. Keep gums tight and enjoy long-lasting gum health. Paradontax. Strong gums. Healthy smile. Real skin results start with one daily ritual. Meet Daily Microfoliant from Dermalogica. 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