The Quarter Byte

Brilliant Harry Mabs Wow! From an 1982 Orbitor 1 to a 1950 Knock Out .. very cool. It’s been amazing to see the innovations on the play fields on these pieces just acquired. I purchased this from a gentleman who had found this in a pawn store, says he’d never seen anything like that before and just couldn’t resist the wow factor. He got his very first home standing game real quick-like after the store said “today only or the curb!” Thank his stars he wanted a project - an amazing great find. D. Gottlieb & Co. dominated the 1950s pinball market - it’s why we know the name so well. Often referred to as the Golden Era, some truly inspiring innovations began in these years. We take it for granted today that the flipper had to begin with the 1st pin with one. Harry Mabs put a coil under such a flipper bumper and made it a reality in the famous Humpty Dumpty in October 1947. All of the technologies developed on the field to that point, such as the bumper itself, were perfectly comp...

“Wow “wow “wow “wow So a couple of 1970s NASA engineers got some cool pinball ideas back in the day. They brought the concept to Gary Stern who in turn let Joe Joos Jr. make it real. It was definitely cool enough to make 889 of them. Real cool: two rotating target bumpers sunk into a smooth, curvy-molded Plexiglas table. This all over a lit moonscape just underneath. Otherworldly, floaty, the ball takes no straight shots but careens in a gravity grid around the rotating bumpers. The molded double back glass is pretty sweet too. All this with total 80s chirps and beeps as you drop targets all sides and seek the locked ball and the time-on-ball bonus points. You learn to flip only one left or right as the ball swims behind front to have the game ask with its cylon voice, “Play, Pinball, Again.” Freaky friggin cool ... you are utterly engrossed in the ball and its movements. It’s an unbelievable pin that just has to be experienced. Definitely more than a novelty .. true grit o...