The History of Pinball

Kelly  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode. And please, tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too.

In 1777, Marie Antoinette, then the queen of France, lost a bet to her brother-in -law, the Comte d'Artois, younger brother to King Louis XVI. The bet was over how quickly the Comte, or rather the 800 workers he employed, could construct his new country house, Chateau de Bagatelle, apparently named as such because the massive estate was to him a mere trifle. At the housewarming party for Chateau de Bagatelle, the guests played a new game, or at least one that was new to them. In this game, the players used sticks to shoot balls up an inclined play field, past pins, with the goal being to get the balls into holes. The game, reportedly a hit with Marie Antoinette, became known as Bagatelle after the name of the chateau. There is no record of what King Louis XVI, whose favorite pastimes included locksmithing and woodworking, thought of the game. Nearly a century later, in 1871, Montague Redgrave was granted US patent number 115357 for "improvement in Bagatelle game." Redgrave's version was a compact wooden cabinet with the cue stick replaced by a spring mechanism that propelled the balls onto a fabric playfield. Nails stood in place of pins, but the goal remained the same: to get the balls into the holes. By the 1930s, the new Bagatelle games were becoming very popular. In autumn of 1931, David Gottlieb, who'd founded the arcade game company, D. Gottlieb and Company, in Chicago a few years earlier, developed a wildly popular coin operated game, he called Baffle Ball, a 24 inch by 16 inch pin game that sold for $17.50, with the metal stand available for an additional $2.50. According to the Internet Pinball Database, Baffle Ball was, "the first game to top the 50,000 mark in production and deliveries." Baffle Ball's success inspired Chicagoan Roy Maloney to create a similar coin op game Ballyhoo. At $16.50 for the 31 inch by 16 inch game, and with the addition of eye popping colorful art, Ballyhoo was an instant success, and within five years, the Bally Manufacturing Company employed 500 people and sold dozens of games. These machines were exciting and popular, but they were still a far cry from what we think of as pinball tables today, and they weren't even called pinball. The term pinball itself was apparently first used in 1936, although it's unclear who coined it. Early pinball machines were small and light, and some players used that to their advantage, physically positioning the machine by lifting it or bumping it to control where the ball rolled. Game designer Harry Williams, who would later found his own pinball company, Williams Manufacturing, devised an ingenious solution to this manhandling of the machines. In 1934, Williams placed a ball on a small post inside a machine, that would fall off if the machine was jostled too much. He originally called this the stool pigeon, but he eventually renamed it the tilt mechanism. And he redesigned it to be a pendulum inside a metal ring, which allowed the player to apply some motion, but not too much. Perhaps the single most important innovation in pinball development came about in a 1947 Gottlieb game called Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty included the first- ever flippers, developed by game designer Harry Mabs. The six flippers on the machine, three on each side, were powered by solenoids, devices with coiled wire that convert electrical energy into mechanical motion. Future designers including Steve Kordek, and Wayne Neyens adjusted the placement and orientation of the flippers, creating the now familiar two flippers at the bottom of the playfield guarding the ball train. By the time flippers were introduced to pinball, however, the game had been outlawed in many parts of the United States. In Fiorella LaGuardia's second stint in the US Congress, he had tried to introduce legislation to ban games of chance, including pinball, but the bill never went anywhere, something LaGuardia blamed on the manufacturers. But when he was elected mayor of New York City, he saw his chance to finally clean up the city, if not the country. In late 1941, citing a needs use materials for war production rather than amusement, LaGuardia asked the city council to outlaw pinball. In January, 1942, he got his wish, when magistrate Ambrose Haddock ruled that pinball was gambling, and thus illegal. LaGuardia immediately sent police out on a raid to confiscate and destroy 10s of 1000s of pinball machines. It wasn't just in New York though. Cities such as Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New Orleans, and even Chicago, home of pinball manufacturing, followed suit and banned pinball. It wasn't until 1976 that the ban on pinball was finally lifted in New York City after writer Roger Sharpe testified to the city council that pinball was a game of skill, not luck, and then proved his point in a demonstration playing the pinball machine Bank Shot in front of the council and even calling his shot, ala Babe Ruth. Most other cities relented as well, and pinball machines were popular staples of arcades in the 1980s and 90s. By the end of the 90s though, home video game consoles had driven a decline in pinball popularity. And at the end of 1999, only one pinball manufacturer was left standing. Stern Pinball run by Gary Stern in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove village was the only major manufacturer of pinball machines for over a decade. But in 2011, a new company came on the scene, Jersey Jack Pinball Company, and others quickly followed. By 2017, NBC News was reporting on the unlikely resurgence of pinball. As of this recording, the crowd sourced Pinball Map shows 40,137 pinball machines available to play in 9882 locations. Joining me in this episode is illustrator and cartoonist Jon Chad, author of, "Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball." I am also joined in this episode by a very special guest co-host, my 12 year old son, Teddy.

Hi, Jon, thanks so much for joining us today.

Jon Chad  10:21  
My pleasure. I'm so excited to get to talk about history of pinball with you all.

Kelly  10:25  
Yes. And to be on the first episode with my guest co host.

Jon Chad  10:29  
I'm so honored and so pumped that you're with us here today, Teddy.

Teddy  10:32  
Also honored I guess, because I read a lot of your science comics books.

Jon Chad  10:37  
Oh, gosh, I'm honored.

Teddy  10:41  
Okay, so how did you become interested in pinball? Like, what got you into pinball?

Jon Chad  10:46  
I think that the clearest through line, because there's there's several times when I was growing up, cuz I used to go to arcades a lot as a kid growing up in the 90s. There was a mall near where I went to school. And sometimes I would go there after school, and I would I would play video games and there was pinball machines there. But I think that what directly got me into pinball was I was living in this very small town in Vermont called White River Junction. And it had a very small population, one pizza place, you know, one block worth of stores and everything. And a pool hall opened up with a Star Wars Episode One pinball machine in it. And me and my friend Alec Longstreth, who's also a tremendous cartoonist, we both love Star Wars, and so suddenly, in this town with not a lot of things to do, there was a pinball machine about Star Wars. And we just hammered that thing. We had so much fun. And that was really our gateway to like kind of this bigger world of pinball, pinball design and aesthetics and everything that now I really love about pinball was just through playing this one game.

Kelly  11:56  
I think you talk about manufacturers having this idea that like, "Oh, if we put intellectual property that'll like, bring people in," and so it worked.

Jon Chad  12:05  
100% worked on me. Yeah. And, you know, this is further further along in the book, that machine Star Wars Episode One is sometimes credited as being the downfall of a lot of pinball. And so I obviously I feel bad about that. But I loved it. I thought it was a great game. I don't think it deserves all the flack that it gets. But yeah, I saw just like the Star Wars logo type from like, across the room, and I was like, you know, Terminator eyes. You know, didit didit didit.

Kelly  12:31  
I want to hear a little bit about the process of writing a book like this, like, you know, how do you do the research on the history piece? Put that with writing, put that with illustrating? Like, it seems like a lot of things to sort of pull together? 

Jon Chad  12:44  
There was a lot of, yeah, there was a lot of juggling. And in some ways, there's a lot of synthesis from one art form to another right. I'm trying to take this very specific art form, the language and, you know, art of pinball, and kind of communicate it through the art of comics, and where I do think there's some overlap in those languages, there's a lot of non-overlap. And so I think the first thing that I did was I made a number of pages of comics as kind of like a test to see can I talk about pinball, using the comics form in a way that's interesting and novel and doesn't diminish one form or the other? Because you can't see if you're listening? Obviously, you're listening to a podcast, but I have a whole shelf of books back here all about pinball. Like, there's no lack of pinball books. But so if I was to do a book about pinball, I needed to contribute something else. And I saw that something else is the integration of the comics form. Once I kind of did those test pages and realized, "Okay, I think I can utilize the language of comics in a way to talk about pinball," I then started to go research. I got all these books, I watched all the documentaries, all the movies, and I also had a bunch of interviews lined up. I was lucky enough to talk to Roger Sharpe, I talked to his son, Josh Sharpe. I talked to Nick Baldridge out in Virginia who's like one of, in my opinion, the foremost experts on like electromechanical machines. And I was able to kind of like, fill in the gaps with my research, or with asking them questions. I was really big into color coding, when I was researching this book. When I would go through and make my Google Docs of my notes, I would make sure to color code everything to whatever source I got it from and that ended up being like really, really useful. Because as I was like, as stuff was hitting the cutting room floor, I was able to kind of still keep track of where everything was and if I needed to go back and oh, I can't I don't have five pages to devote to, you know, the introduction of the pop up or I only have a couple panels where where was the best facts about the pop bumper, and I've returned to those works. So there's a lot of color coding, a lot of note taking, and then you know, just kind of pushing that through my normal comics making process of thumbnailing, penciling and inking. 

Teddy  15:06  
Well, I think this might be the single most important question in this episode. Okay, what is your favorite pinball table?

Jon Chad  15:15  
Oh my gosh. Oh, I think my favorite machine, gosh, it might be like Metallica, the Stern Metallica from I want to say like, the early 2010s. I just, I really like it. I really like the Dirty Donny art on it. I am not like a tremendously skilled pinball player. So there's something I mean, you can get real real deep into the rule sets on some of these machines. But this one just really speaks to me. So I've always I've always liked that. And I've had a lot of really memorable, really fun games on it. So that's the one that comes to mind, just sitting here. But I definitely fluctuate. You know, I'll go to an arcade. We have we have a lot of great stuff out here in the Bay Area. And all I always walk away just being like, "Oh, well, no, you know, Swords of Fury is my new favorite machine. Right now, my answer will be Metallica. 

Kelly  16:12  
So I want to go back through the history a little bit. And, you know, maybe not all the way back into, you know, 18th century France or whatever. But let's talk some about the connection between pinball and the American depression, which, you know, I find this it's such a fascinating time in American history, anyway. You've got the depression, you've got prohibition, there's so many interesting pieces of cultural warfare going on at the time. So I wonder if you could talk about that in relationship to pinball. Like, what is it about pinball, I don't think we're even calling it pinball yet, at that point, but like, that is so fascinating to people in that time period, and then draws the ire of people like Mayor LaGuardia?

Jon Chad  16:57  
I really think it comes down to escapism. You know, I think the same things that a young person might say about a video game today, I think that they were saying about pinball back then. "Wow, look at these, look at this art. This is a really technological experience. This is so cutting edge." I mean, you have to remember that, like some of these machines, '33, '34, '35, you're starting to get electronic components like lights, or very simple kicking arms. Those are the building blocks of some of the most cutting edge inventions of the time. Like the doorbell had just come out, and here's a machine that has electronic motor technology like a doorbell. And then to us that sounds like rinky dink. But, but that must have been mind blowing. And this was for like a comparably really small amount, this idea that you could escape your your everyday troubles and for a real paltry sum interface with this kind of fresh novelty, I think which is very intoxicating. And also, you know, think of the state of media, you know, movies are, you've got movies, and you've got film reels and everything, but you don't have animation quite yet. You don't have, you don't have any sort of color projection. And here you can have these full color tables, you know, eventually, with these big back glasses that have these tremendously imaginative transportative scenes on it. I can imagine somebody, you know, having a very hard time in the middle of New York City, being swept away, for only a penny to a tropical backdrop of some sort of exciting game that's kicking the ball around and lighting up and ringing bells and everything. I think that's what it boils down to. You know, putting ourselves in the shoes of somebody who's never seen a Nintento in their life, you know, never seen a TV or a smartphone, and what it must have felt like to see like the Bagatelle game Chicago, kick that ball all over the place as if by magic. 

Teddy  19:03  
Well, there are going to be a lot of questions about your opinions. To start with designers, you can use any era. Who do you think is like either your favorite, or in your opinion, the greatest designer of all time?

Jon Chad  19:21  
I think I feel like a lot of pinheads that are listening to this are leaning forward in their seats right now. I have a tremendous affinity for Pat Lawlor. He has designed some of my favorite games. He's still in in the pinball game designing games. You know he did Dialed In! very recently, he did Roller Coaster Tycoon which I really really love. I just think that he has a good sense of like play and a good balance between speed and stop and go. Those are the kind of like the two predominant design philosophies for pinball. You'll see these games by people like Steve Ritchie who are like flow games, you know, his intention is that you're shooting one shot, it's flowing directly back to the flipper and you're shooting again, shooting again shooting again, versus other people who design games with a little bit more patience, you know. You're stopping the ball, you're aiming you're shooting. And I think Pat Lawlor, for me hits like a good balance between those two. And I just have a lot of fond memories of this game. So that's, that's who I would, but there's a lot of great ones out there again. For people who are maybe listening to this and like, "Oh, an episode about pinball!" You know, I would check out the Steve, Steve Ritchie games. The George Gomez games are really tremendous. Yeah, there's a lot of great designers out there to check out.

Kelly  20:42  
This will be like the pinball is bouncing between the history, and the.... So you were talking about the the ways that during the Depression, it was so interesting, and I can imagine that you know, that being escapist as you described it, but there are people who adamantly hate pinball. Pinball is like ruining the country, ruining the youth. Do you think this is something that's just sort of wrapped up in this time period? I mean, there's people trying to prohibit alcohol, there's people trying to prohibit, you know, singing and everything, all sorts of things. You know, is there something in particular about pinball, and especially pinball, the way it was, then that's different? Or is this just, you know, basically, the kind of thing we see now, and you know, somebody's trying to ban something just to get people riled up? Like, what what's going on?

Jon Chad  21:37  
I mean, I think part of the American condition is looking for a scapegoat at times, in media, in emerging media, right. Like we see it with video games, we see it with different online, things where, you know, there's no nuance to some people's approaches and judgments of them, you know. They perceive it to be bad, and they kind of construe the worst case scenarios. Can I sit here and say that one of one of the classic arguments was like, "Oh, children are going to spend their lunch money, their their, their, their precious precious lunch money, you know, playing these pinball games?" Can I look at you and say that that never happened? No. It probably happened at some point. Was it widespread, spread enough to cause like a national emergency? Absolutely not. I think it just really comes down to yeah, blaming something for a problem that ultimately can't defend itself. In the same way that like, you know, let's let's take like the Mortal Kombat example, for instance. You know, when when Mortal Kombat came out, there was a lot of ink spilt about the damage that that was doing to American youth. Were there games that glorified violence and had blood? Yes, you know, there, there is a little bit of truth behind this stereotyping and scapegoating. And the same is true with pinball. You know, there were some games that would in like the 30s, they would pay out some like a token or gum, or, you know, some knick knack. And there are documented instances of unscrupulous people offering to trade those trinkets for more valuable things, thus getting people to get in the door to put more money in the machine with the hopes that they could trade it in for I don't know, a watch or a cash or something. Do you also have instances of you know, unscrupulous people or criminals using pinball machines as a way of like laundering money? I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do. But again, this is not to the volume that would warrant such an over reaching reaction from from politicians and law enforcement. I don't think that there's anything inherent in it that made it like ripe to be targeted, save for its newness.

Kelly  23:57  
And popularity. I was shocked when you said how many machines were destroyed in New York City. 

Jon Chad  24:04  
Oh, yeah! When all was said and done, it's like over 11,000. It's it's an, by today's standards of of machine population is an unfathomable number. I can't imagine 11,000 machines in New York today. It's just, it's wild how many were out there.

Teddy  24:19  
According to your book, 11,800, nearly 12,000.

Jon Chad  24:22  
So it's, it's it's crazy. I wonder whether like anybody will ever a lot of them were dumped into the Hudson River. Mayor LaGuardia, who was kind of the architect of pinball's downfall in America for an extended period of time,  he loved to make a great show of smashing these machines and toppling them over and you know, turning the legs of the machines into billy clubs for law enforcement. And you know, he would boast that they were being dumped in the river by the bargeload. Because they were made of wood, I assume that they're all disintegrated. But I don't I don't know. I mean, like if like, old shipwrecks can still be, maybe there's just a pile of pinball machines at the bottom of the Hudson.

Hmmm, if you're a salvager out there, it seems like the project to go do.

I would love that. I would I would buy I would buy something that was made from reclaimed pinball wood from the bottom of the Hudson. That'd be that'd be so killer.

Teddy  25:30  
This is gonna sound kind of similar to you to my previous question. But if you could have any pinball table in your apartment, what would it be?

Jon Chad  25:42  
I don't, I used to have, I've had a couple of machines. But at one point, I moved to an apartment that was just too too small. And I, I didn't have the social capital to be like, "Hello, I'm gonna bring my pinball machine with me." So I sold the pinball machine. But I used to have a Jurassic Park and a Gottlieb Arena. And at different points in my life, I had those in my apartment. And it was it was quite small. A game that I would have now, I would want something that's like, easy to maintain. I would probably want, I probably want something classic from the 90s that I could just get just get a lot of fun out of that doesn't have like, super, super complicated electronics. Yeah, so something from like the Data East era, just because I have a lot of experience with those machines. Maybe like Star Trek The Next Generation. So I think my wife would enjoy that as well. Or 2001, Lord of the Rings. Oh, that'd be a good. I think that's the one that we would both get it. We both love that we both love work.

Kelly  26:42  
So my husband, Teddy's Dad, I'm pretty sure he would get the TNG one if I ever allowed him to have the social capital in our small condo?

Teddy  26:54  
He would definitely. 

Kelly  26:56  
Yeah, that's his. I think he loves he plays them online. And I think he likes playing that one a lot.

Jon Chad  27:01  
I would, I'm surprised that there hasn't been some sort of move to make like smaller machines. Like it seems short sighted in my opinion, that that there's nobody's been innovating like, "Oh, what if we just made like a smaller machine, maybe even move back to that tabletop Bagatelle era," you know, for for this kind of generation of a lot of people living in condos and apartments, you kind of aren't excluding a large portion of the market that just don't have the space, and don't have the ability to like, have a pinball machine in their efficiency.

Kelly  27:38  
So, I want to talk a little bit about this, I think it's 1976, when New York City says, "Okay, maybe we can stop the banning for decades, Pinball," and finally is like, "Alright, maybe we can allow it." And Roger Sharpe, who you mentioned earlier that you had a chance to interview is like, "Okay, it's my chance. I'm gonna go fight for," can you talk a little bit? This is such an interesting moment in history, really. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that, and what you learned about it, talking to Roger Sharpe?

Jon Chad  28:12  
Sure. I think one of the one of the one of the greatest things that I learned from him, besides that He's a tremendously friendly guy, he's so nice, is that it was not necessarily a like, external forces, you know, descending upon New York City looking to like, you know, undo this ban. In some ways the call was coming from inside the house. LA had already re- legalized pinball machines. And New York, as an entity, could kind of see across the expanse of the United States and be like, "Oh, wow, they're making a lot of money," because now the operators are having to pay these fees to have the pinball machines, even though they're legal, they just have to pay for a gaming license. And so there was a desire within New York City's political scene to kind of get in on that money. You know, it's like, "Oh, if we re-legize it, we realize that we could get that money." So that was an interesting because, yeah, initially, I thought was the kind of two sides of this was like, you know, like, Roger, and the, you know, electronic amusement organization, I forget the right the exact acronym, but they like, you know, they're the forces of good in New York. But in some ways, there was aspects of New York that didn't want this to go through. So and so he, you know, Roger is a writer. He's not associated with the amusement organization that was kind of pushing through this re-legalization. He was just a big proponent of pinball, and he had written this amazing book called, "Pinball." So it was clear that he had the ability to speak on the subject with seriousness and maturity, you know, in a way that I think would be absolutely necessary in a conversation about a game. And a game that people could argue in the room is a game for children. And he basically, you know, hoisted this conversation, this argument that, you know, pinball is a game of skill, it's not a game of chance, it's not this slot machine. It's not this gambling device that we have no effect on, you know. It's as much of a game as golf, or baseball. And, you know, the finale of this hearing was for him to show like that to backup his argument by showing what he could do. And the other, you know, really interesting thing that I learned from Roger was that they had this El Dorado machine that they were going to play on. And he was familiar with El Dorado, he had played it before and kind of knew the rules and knew what to do. And at the last minute, the head of this committee that they were speaking in front of, kind of was like, "No, no, no, no, no, we're not that machine, not that machine, you know, like, you've probably done something to that machine. Like it's been sitting out here all day, you know, who knows what you've done to it, we'll use, you know, Drawbacks Curtain, the backup machine." And it's this copy of Bank Shot, which he had never played. And I actually didn't know that I didn't know that he had never played Bank Shot, which just makes the story even more incredible, because then he proceeds to just like, unleash the most killer game of pinball on just cold, right? He's just reading the table, reading the rule card, and just figuring out what to do. And narrating like everything that he's doing, as he's playing, and it just creates this just complete takedown of any argument that could be leveled about this being a glorified slot machine.

Teddy  31:44  
So you were talking about making pinball machines smaller? You mentioned additive manufacturing in your book. I think that could be a very viable solution to that.

Jon Chad  31:56  
I think so too. I think the only downside to me you're referring to like 3d printing, right? I actually never heard that term, I really didn't.

Kelly  32:04  
We have a 3d printer here. 

Jon Chad  32:07  
Oh, I'm very jealous. We have one at the local library, and if it can be printed in under 40 minutes, it's free. So I've printed a lot of little knickknacks. I think it just comes down to force. These pin balls being thrown by the solenoids generate a lot of force. The first time I visited the Stern factory, that one of the biggest pinball manufacturers still around, they had a couple of test machines set up that were just running the ball being flipped by a flipper to hit a piece of plastic or a button or a toy, just to see if it could hold up to the to the force of like 10,000 hits, you know, over and over and over again. And I'm not convinced that additive printing at least in my experience has the strength to be able to with withhold that that force. Now that being said the solution to that might be just like a lesser powered solenoid. I don't necessarily have like enough knowledge in this field to say what would make it possible but I certainly think it could be possible.

Teddy  33:11  
I can tell you that there are like carbon fiber nylon filaments out there so I think it could be possible.

Jon Chad  33:18  
Hmm. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. If there was a if there was a more heavy duty material that could take the blow, I think that that certainly would, would help. I think that a lot of the reason why pinball machines have like remained the same size, is probably because of you know, the the necessity to have bulk orders. You know, like, oh, the cabinets we order like 10,000 cabinets, and there's this one company in Chicago that makes all the cabinets and that's the size they are and to get 10,000 of a different size cabinet would be like an astronomical price. I assume that that plays into it. But additive additive manufacturing certainly eliminates some of the like minimum order necessities. 

Teddy  34:01  
Yeah, especially if it was like a print farm with like 1000s of printers.

Kelly  34:05  
This is Teddy's dream is that we like buy a house just to make a print farm. It's not going to happen.

Jon Chad  34:11  
I've never I've never heard that term, Teddy, and I love it. I absolutely love it. Do those things exist? 

Teddy  34:16  
Yes. In fact, like the companies that make printers have print farms so they can make the components for the printers.

Jon Chad  34:25  
Oh my gosh. I just got like a like a real like machines making machines like Apocalypse vision in my brain. But then I remembered it was 3d printers. And I was like, okay, that's fine.

Kelly  34:40  
As long as we don't attach AI to it, we're good.

Jon Chad  34:42  
Yeah, sure, sure. 

Teddy  34:44  
Then I've got a problem.

Kelly  34:47  
All right, that'll be a different podcast.  So I wanted to ask your your book is kind of a political social history but also a technological history, but also in some ways art history. So I think that the art is the piece that is really interesting to me because I think it's people don't necessarily think about pinball as being art unless they're real pinball aficionados. So I wonder if you could talk about the art and what it how that is a genre of art on its own. As you mentioned earlier, I think I saw on your website that you've actually done art for a pinball table. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. And you know, that that piece of the history of pinball that people might not think much about?

Jon Chad  35:35  
Yeah, I think that when you when you string you strip away all of the the art that we're about to talk about all the narrative, all the all the kind of bigger communicative ideas, what you're left with is a piece of plywood with a ball rolling up and down. Like, that's all that's all it is, like, you have two flippers at the bottom, you're you're throwing that ball back up the plywood, and eventually it's going to come back down. And, you know, the fact that pinball, you know, takes that experience and kind of turns it into something else is a is a really special experience. And I think a lot of people if they don't, if they can't get that, then pinball will never be anything more than just a piece of plywood with the ball on it for them. In the same way that you know, some people just can't get their teeth into animation, the poor fools, you know, or someone just doesn't really love comics or doesn't really get a certain genre of music. I think some people it just won't click with but, you know, pinball art, and its communicative ability is really at the intersection of a lot of different arts. And that's not unique to pinball. There's a lot of multidisciplinary things out there, different products, different art forms, but pinball combines animation, lighting, programming, graphic design, industrial design, cabinetry, into one experience. I think people you know, pinball art, you know, just those two words, they would naturally start thinking of the, you know, the cabinet, the big, big box that is the pinball, I realize I'm throwing out this pinball jargon, the cabinet. It's like the main body of the game, the back box is that part that sticks up out of the top. And I think people will think of, you know, the back box, the cabinet, the playfield like that as being pinball art. But for me, pinball art is really at that intersection. It's when that ball is rolling, and you are timing a shot so that it hits up a ramp, and at the right moment, a sound is triggered of a dragon breathing fire. And at the right moment, a light is flashing on a dragon that is breathing fire. And you as a player, as that ball is heading back down the ramp towards you, have this feeling that you just attacked the dragon. And that's really special. That's, that's, that's cool. And I think once you can kind of get into that, like, "Oh, this is not just a ball hitting plastic rolling up ramps like this, this ball is a part of a narrative that's unfolding that I am in control of. I think that's the magic of pinball art. You know, graphically, it comes in varying different styles, you have realistic styles, you have these beautiful games from the 60s that are more like abstract or cubist. But at the end of the day, like when I say pinball art, I'm talking about its communicative ability, its ability to take all these things, these disparate arts and rewrite what you are doing with your hands in flipping the ball and turning it into like a story, a moment in time. And it's so interesting, how precarious that art is, is balanced. I was playing the new version of Jurassic Park a month ago. And this particular instance of the game, there was a switch that was broken on the main ramp. And it the whole, the whole, the whole illusion fell apart. I was trying to play this game, and I couldn't advance the lights and the sounds weren't syncing up correctly. I was doing things to the game that weren't giving me any feedback. That relationship between me and the game was broken. It just was so and later I was thinking about it so fascinating that like just one like small like, electronic component breaking, kind of smashed that illusion for me. Yeah, it's it's really, I'm trying to think I think the most classic example and the one that people point to as being they they point to as being the era of pinball storytelling is High Speed, this game themed around speeding cars and escaping from the police. You know, so you have all of the sensory inputs that one might have being in a car and that same experience, you've got the speed of the ball, you've got the unpredictable, you know, swerving path as if you're trying to like if they'd you know, the cop car, you've got the light changes from green to red as the lights are changing around, you've got the flashing, you know, sirens, you can start seeing all these kind of things that on their own wouldn't mean much come together to give you the sensation, "Oh, I feel like I'm being chased by the cops. How quaint."

Kelly  40:19  
And so that's something that evolves over time, then that that storytelling piece.

Jon Chad  40:25  
You know, I mean, I make the argument in the book that even as far back as like the 40s, you know, when pinball machines started to replicate even through the Bagatelle era of the 30s, I would even argue that, like, there's a level of narrative and transportation in making a game about a tropical location, or, you know, the, there's games about, you know, the Chicago train system that are some of my favorite Bagatelle machines. And like, if you're not in Chicago, that's probably got to be transportative. And it's not a comp, it's not a complicated story. And it's not a story that necessarily facilitates the same relationship or interaction. But I think it certainly tells a story. I think it's once you get to, like, sound, and like complicated light shows, that you really start to like, put the pieces together on like telling a complex story with more nuance than just, "You're playing a hand of poker. Select the right cards." I guess that's a story. Not a very exciting story, but it is a story. 

Kelly  41:32  
Yeah. So the technology and the storytelling feed into each other.

Jon Chad  41:36  
Yeah, yeah. You had asked about, you know, my experience designing a machine or doing the art for a machine. And I think what I would say to that is, I I'm tempted to say specifically, I did the graphic art for the game or the illustrative art because again, I think of pin, when I think of pinball art, I think of this communicative ability that's dependent on all of these things. And I didn't do all those things. When I zoomed out after I was done with this game, and I actually played it, I realized that inch for inch, my art was all over the game. But it was only one aspect of this larger experience. And I could use the art to try to communicate things on my end. I did that it was the Jetsons for Spooky Pinball. And like one of my favorite moments on the art is one of the ramps, I lined up the ramp with an illustration of those vacuum tubes that the Jetsons take. And I wanted to give the player the feeling that the ball going up the ramp, this plastic clear ramp was similar to that vacuum tube. And I really think I nailed that. I'm really happy with that. That's like my, my, like, favorite little moment of communication in the machine. Same thing like right by the dog, Astro, Astro is running on a treadmill. And the treadmill was right next to a spinner, which is a device where you hit it with the ball and it spins around and hits the switch multiple times. And that idea of rotation, I thought that that that paired well with the idea of like a treadmill. So those are the sorts of things I tried to keep in mind, because I realized quite quickly that like I was working in my little cubicle in a much bigger figurative office that would make the game it's fully realized kind of art form or piece of art.

Teddy  43:26  
Well, since you're nearing the end of some people's attention spans, I think we should ask you, where listeners to this podcast can get the book or like, learn more about your other work? 

Jon Chad  43:38  
Absolutely. You can get my book pretty much, you can order it through any local bookstore that you prefer. It's on the regular online vendors that you find. It's called, "Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball." You can find more about me and my work @JonChad.com, and that's Jon Chad with with no h, no h in John, h in Chad. And then I'll also put a plug in for the if you're interested in learning pinball and getting into pinball, two great resources I would put out there is The Pinball Map, which used to be an app, but now it's a full fledged website. I still think there's an app version. But you can basically plug in whatever city you're in, in most of America, and then some other like larger European cities, and you can be like, "Oh, what games are available?" And it will boom, it'll tell you which places are there which games and some will even say like what condition they're in. I would also plug the Professional Amateur Pinball Association, PAPA, @papa.org They still have a great library of tutorial videos of pinball machines. I have found that kind of reading about how to play pinball is far less effective for me than watching somebody play pinball. You know, I could sit here and start rattling off, "Oh, you know, you hit the center shot five times, and then the gate drops, bah bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah." But like kind of seeing it in action is really cool. So that's what I would two places, if you're looking to dip your toes in.

Kelly  45:17  
Can you please also plug your amazing science comics because the kids in this house and the adults too, really love them?

Jon Chad  45:24  
I'd be happy to. I have done a number of science comics, comics where I take scientific subjects and try to relay nonfiction facts in a fiction setting. I'm firmly of the belief that nonfiction should be fun. And that we can still walk away from a good story having learned something. I've done one about volcanoes. I did one about the periodic table. And I illustrated one that was written by Rosemary Mosco about the solar system. Later this month, two books that I've done about mathematics are coming out, taking the same approach of combining kind of fiction and nonfiction.

Kelly  46:00  
Excellent. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about? 

Jon Chad  46:04  
Have you two gone out and played pinball? When was the last time you two played pinball?

Teddy  46:09  
I don't think I like ever really had a chance to play a pinball machine.

Kelly  46:14  
 I think you did.

Teddy  46:15  
 Like maybe once. Yeah, it's not because there's any dearth of pinball machines in Chicago.

Kelly  46:21  
We do live in like the pinball capital of the world. 

Jon Chad  46:24  
You're in Chicago? Oh man. I'll send you a list.

Kelly  46:28  
Yeah but Teddy has played online games.

Jon Chad  46:33  
Like digital pinball? 

Teddy  46:34  
Yeah, yeah. Like Pinball Arcade pinball at that.

Jon Chad  46:39  
Oh, yeah. Those are great. Listen, you're not going to. I'm not a purist here. Pinball is pinball. I think that there's things that you can do in digital pinball that you can't do in regular pinball, or IRL pinball. And that's like to be celebrated. When you asked me what machine I wanted, I came like this close to saying like a virtual pinball table. Because then I could have like a lot of machines. And then also I wouldn't have the same mechanical upkeep of like, fixing solenoids and switches and stuff like that, which I'm happy to do. But with a with a young kid, it's it's something, time is a rare commodity.

Teddy  47:15  
Either pinball tables and just like the whole play glass is just digital?

Jon Chad  47:20  
Yeah, yeah. It's just a just one giant screen. And then it has like, you know, a glorified Raspberry Pi in there. And then you load up different digital games onto it.

Teddy  47:32  
Like experience from like playing on a controller and a PS five or something? 

Jon Chad  47:36  
They would absolutely yeah, the idea. I have a hard time playing, I play the game on my keyboard. Recently, I also played a play a game on my phone, where I had my fingers on, you know, each side of the screen and it just it's not the same as having the table. And some of these virtual, you know, systems are getting better with like, being able to shake and have some semblance of like, oh, it's shaking. I haven't played a virtual table in about a year and a half. So I can't speak to like how good that the shaking is these days, but it's it's there. There are so many interesting things happening in pinball, right now. We're really living in the golden age. When I got into it around like 2010, it was still kind of in the doldrums. Jersey Jack had not yet reared its head, and that was like the next big publisher. It was like just Stern for like an entire decade. And when I got into pinball, I was just at the tail end of that. And the documentaries at the time, were just very dismal. Just very sad about the outlook of pinball and things have really swung up. And certainly some places have still shuttered their doors, but there's like a ton of pinball manufacturers, you know, people putting out one title a year, one title every two years. I'm particularly a fan of this company based out of Texas called Multimorphic, where they're creating this modular pinball system, where the back third and the front third can be exchanged. And then the middle third of the game is a giant touchscreen. And the ball rolling over the touchscreen interacts with different things.

Teddy  49:13  
Gerry Stellenberg 

Jon Chad  49:14  
Yeah, Gary Stellenberg. It's so cool. Yeah, definitely check those. There's gotta be a Multimorphic machine up in Chicago.

Kelly  49:20  
Well, John, thank you so much for joining us. This was really fun. Not all parts of US history are fun, but at least this was fun. And I really enjoyed it.

Jon Chad  49:31  
Yeah, it was, it was lovely to talk. It's always great to talk about pinball history. It always gets me fired up and makes me anxious to go out there and play again. 

Kelly  49:41  
And I will admit, I am not much of a pinball player. I have played in my life, but maybe I'll go out I think there's pinball machines probably right in our neighborhood, actually. So maybe I'll go out and check out a pinball machine.

Jon Chad  49:53  
You know, I personally find that it's like car antennas, like when cars used to have antennas. The second that I would recognize like, oh, cars have antennas. That's all I could see every single car going by now that you're like aware of it. Every time you go into a place you're like, oh, wait, there's like three pinball machine back there.

Kelly  50:11  
All right, well, thank you,

Jon Chad  50:14  
My pleasure.

Teddy  50:14  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. You can find the sources used for this episode @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter, or Instagram @Unsung__History, or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To  contact us with questions or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate and review and tell your friends.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai