I wanted to find the photo my dad took before I posted this, but I don’t have it. After he died, someone else has it I’m sure.
Anyway, not sure if this qualifies for nerdiness, but I twice built my own full-sized pinball machines. Everything I know about electricity, I learned from those projects. Pure trial and error, and several good shocks.
The first time, I was in my mid-teens (1975 or so), and I was obsessed with pinball. Every bit of money I could get hold of was spent at the bowling alley feeding quarters to the machines. I wasn’t fussy. If the table had a decent design and compelling play, I loved it. I remember two of my favorites from that time were Williams’ “Triple Action” and “Skylab”. Williams’ tables had the best action, I thought. Followed by Bally, and then Gottlieb. I liked Gottlieb tables well enough, but most of them were too unfair, I thought.
At school, I’d spend all of my study halls designing tables. I designed hundreds or thousands of them over the years. I could tell at a glance how each one would play.
I finally decided to put one of my favorite designs to the test. I saved up and bought a bunch of lumber, cut it to size, and built the table. Everything was adjustable, including the legs, and the angle of the table surface. I had no actual pinball machine parts, so I bought a bunch of electric motors and other parts (including a counting unit for scoring) from the local surplus center, and bought a bunch of wire from … somewhere. Luckily, I guessed right on the gauge of wire; no fire was ever started. The lights were from our Christmas tree lights. My flippers were totally mechanical, but I figured out how leverage worked, and perfected the design so they actually had good power. Hell, the entire table actually worked, and was moderately fun to play, but lacked the power of thumper-bumpers and solenoids.
Later, in my 20’s, I got hold of an actual used functioning real pinball machine (“The Black Hole”) for $150, and decided to try another one of my designs.
This time, I was smarter. Having a working table to begin with made things so much easier. All I had to do was remove the components from the play board, and then the board itself. Then buy one 3/4" sheet of plywood, cut it to size, lay out the play-field, drill the holes, and install all the old parts where I wanted them. By then I had found our local pinball supplier, and had ordered other parts I needed through them.
When I was finished, it was glorious. Everything functioned exactly as it should. Dad was so impressed with my wiring that he took a photo of the underside of the play-field, which was indeed impressive, as I was the only person in the world who knew what everything did.
Unfortunately, when I went to hook up the digital audio (it was one of the early digital machines), I blew out a board, which also took out the scoring capabilities. As I was unable to locate another board, I trashed the project, after almost a year of work.
