A ballyhoo over pinball
QUESTION Who invented the pinball machine?
Modern pinball, a coin-operated arcade game, evolved from a classic 18th-century French game called bagatelle — an indoor table game, the object of which is to get a number of balls past wooden pins into holes that are guarded by wooden pegs.
Cockamaroo was an english version of Bagatelle which added a shooting lane on both sides of the board. An American version of Cockamaroo called Tivoli, popularly known as Peg Pool, became a feature of U.S. bars in the 1860s.
In 1871, British-born inventor Montague redgrave was granted U. S. Patent #115,357 for ‘Improvements in Bagatelle’. redgrave added the coiled spring and a plunger, replaced wooden balls with marbles, and inclined the play-board.
Countertop pinball became wildly popular in the U.S. in the Thirties. There is some debate as to who introduced the coin slot. Arthur Paulin, a carpenter from Youngstown, ohio, built a modified bagatelle game for his daughter’s Christmas present.
He and his friend earl Froom added a coin slot and put it up in the local general store. Its success led to the formation of Automatic Industries, which sold more than 27,000 countertop machines called Whiffle, which many consider the forefather of today’s pinball industry.
A rival product was Bally Hoo, a countertop mechanical game with optional legs, released in 1931, and an early product from raymond Maloney’s now famous Bally entertainment corporation. It was also the first machine manufactured by d. Gottlieb & Company, for many years a premier pinball machine manufacturer.
electric machines appeared in 1933 and the tilt mechanism followed in 1934. This was invented by Stanford graduate Harry Williams to prevent players from physically lifting and shaking the games. Williams went on to form the nevada gaming company WSM Industries.
The pinball bumper was invented in 1937. It debuted in a game called Bumper made by Bally. In 1947, two designers at the d. Gottlieb & Company pinball factory in Chicago, Harry Mabs and Wayne neyens, transformed that rudimentary game into one called Humpty dumpty, adding six electromechanical flippers, three on each side.
In 1948, the great pinball designer Steve Kordek, inventor of more than 100 machines, designed Genco’s Triple Action, a game that featured just two flippers, both controlled by buttons at the bottom of the table, and thus the basis of modern pinball was set.
He went on to invent entertaining variations such as the drop target in 1962, debuting in Vagabond, and multi-balls in 1963, debuting in Beat The Clock.
Gareth Evans, Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan.
QUESTION I met a gentleman flintknapping, i.e. making flint tools. What other ‘forgotten’ skills are out there?
KnAPPInG is the process of chipping away material from high- silica stones such as flint, chert and obsidian, to produce sharp projectile points or tools. only pure stones will provide the fracture predictability required to achieve finely knapped tools and objets d’art.
The original Germanic term knopp meant strike, shape, or work. It is one of the oldest and most important skills known. Knapped tools first appeared in Africa around three million years ago and the earliest so far recognised in Britain, from Happisburgh in norfolk, are nearly a million years old. Many are stunning works of art, as rare as they are diverse in shape, colour, purpose, workmanship and beauty. They inspire modern knappers.
Another mostly forgotten skill is that of the caskmaker or cooper. Today, there are only three recognised coopers in the entire country making wooden casks.
There are many other skills that are being lost to the layman in the consumer/ computer era. These include butchery, sewing, carpentry, foraging and even navigation — the rise of the satnav has led to a diminution in map-reading skills.
Lionel Entwhistle, Oxford. HoW about the simple art of conversation — killed off by smartphones and social media.
Hilary Marshall, Chippenham, Wilts. A More recent case of ‘lost skills’ occurs in the motor trade. Fifty years ago, items such as engines, gearboxes and even small parts such as windscreen wipers and light fittings were repaired or overhauled. Today, assuming the replacement part cost doesn’t make the car a ‘writeoff ’, the component is automatically replaced with no attempt to fix it.
Pete Williams, Hayes, Middx.
QUESTION Were there any female directors of note in the early days of cinema?
THe earlier answers rightly referenced Alice Guy, the first female director, and dorothy Arzner, as being just about the only women to direct in Hollywood for half a century, between 1930 and 1980.
U.S. director Lois Weber (1879-1939) should also be mentioned. She was the first woman to own her own movie studio, Lois Weber Productions, in 1917.
She was famous for her frank examination of social issues, the most famous of which, Where Are My Children?, focused on abortion. Another, called Shoes, now heralded as a feminist classic, looked at the devastating ramifications of poverty on a young woman’s life.
Universal’s Carl Laemmle said he’d ‘trust Miss Weber with any sum of money that she needed to make any picture’. In 1916, he funded Weber’s The dumb Girl of Portici — the first studio epic and Hollywood’s most expensive film. It told the story of a peasant girl in 17th-century naples and starred russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. It is one of the great films of any era.
Ellie Goddard, Tenby, Pembrokeshire.
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