Phone Chats With Harry Williams

I’ve told you about my memorable visit with pinball pioneer Harry Williams at his home in Palm Springs, California in March 1978. After that visit I had the occasion to talk on the telephone with Mr. Williams several times between that time and his untimely death in September 1983.

During these conversations I asked various questions of him and made notes of his answers and comments. Many different subjects were discussed during these calls and not necessarily in any particular sequence; just as the questions came to mind during the call. In this, and succeeding articles, I will describe the information I gained from this great man during these telephone conversations.

Before I start discussing these phone conversations with Harry, a word about the accuracy of this information. You must keep in mind that most everything Mr. Williams told me was from his memory of games and events which, in general, took place between 30 and 50 years earlier! For this reason everything he said may not have been entirely accurate. Names of games may have been confused, etc. However, I have made no attempt to try and correct this information, even though I may have reason to believe that some of it was in error. I will report what Harry told me and it is up to the reader to assign whatever amount of credence he wishes to this information. As a final note on this subject, let me say that during these conversations there were many times when I felt that he sounded unclear on some points, but with others his memory appeared to me to be "crystal clear",

My first phone conversation with Mr. Williams occurred on May 1, 1978. I asked Harry if he had heard of Universal Industries, a company in existence in the late 1940's, one of who's games, a 1-ball horserace game called WINNER, I had just acquired. He told me that the company had been founded by Mel Binks (a designer for J. H. Keeney Co.) and Lyn Durrant, Harry's friend and ex-partner in United Manufacturing. Harry went on to say that United was eventually taken over by Seeburg in the late 1960's, just as Williams was taken over by the same company in the early sixties.
I next asked Mr. Williams about two old games owned by a friend of mine, Fred Roth of Thousand Oaks California., on neither of which we could find any manufacturer's name. One of these games, TORPEDO, he said he did not exactly remember, but from my description of it's features he said it sounded very similar to Bally's FLEET of 1934. The other game I mentioned, STAR-LITE, (also from the mid Thirties) he said he thought may have been made by Chicago Coin. (AUTHOR'S NOTE: A list of game names, appearing in the January 1940 issue of the trade publication Coin Machine Journal, showed 2 games by that name, one made by Automatic Engineering Co., and the other by Exhibit Supply)

When I finally asked him about another of Fred's games, an early game by his Williams Manufacturing Company called ZINGO, he had a better recollection. He said he remembered making that upright game during World War II using parts from pre-war games (since during the war game manufacturers could not get any new parts or war essential materials). When I told him that Fred's machine had large colored light bulbs mounted on each side, Harry said he did not remember building it that way, the lights probably being added by an operator.

Finally, Harry told me of the very first machine made by his Williams Manufacturing. He said it was a fortune telling arcade machine called SELECT-A-SCOPE. He then told me that one of these machines was still in operation in an arcade on the pier in Santa Monica, California. That ended our first telephone conversation.

My next phone call to Mr. Williams was a little over a year later, on April 2, 1979. I first asked Harry if he knew which company first originated the "match feature". He replied he thought it might have been United, or possibly Keeney, remarking that Keeney designer Mel Binks was a good designer. He then said that his ex-partner Sam Stern might remember, but that he himself was not sure.

I then asked him if he remembered the pingames made by Williams in the early 1950's, which had a "bingo format". He replied he remembered them producing LONG BEACH (the only true "bingo pinball" made by Williams). When I asked him about a flipper game with a bingo format and a "circus motif", the playfield for which my friend Rob Hawkins had found, he said he did not remember it, again saying that Sam Stern might recall it. (AUTHOR'S NOTE: I finally found out, by looking at Mike Pacak's old pinball brochures at Pinball Expo '87, that the game was called STARLITE and was made in 1953. Other Williams "flipper/bingo" games were DISK JOCKEY, FOUR CORNERS, and HONG KONG, all made around that same time.)

Harry next related to me the story of him leaving his Williams Manufacturing Company in 1959. He said the company was bought in that year by the Consolidated Drug Company. He went on to say that he and Sam Stern had been partners in Williams since 1947. He told me that Consolidated let the partners opt for either cash or stock in the company. Harry said he took the cash, but Sam decided to take stock instead. He went on to say that Sam later regained control of Williams for a time, but finally sold the company to Seeburg in 1963.

I next asked Mr. Williams if he remembered who originated the "pop bumper". He replied he thought it was Exhibit Supply. When I told him about the 1938 Stoner game, ZETA, I had when I was a kid, and that it had a "spring type" pop bumper in the center of it's circular playfield, he said he remembered that game and that it could have been the first use of such a device.

I then asked him if the Exhibit games made just prior to the war were the first games to use "eject holes"? Harry quickly reminded me that his 1934 pioneer electric action game, CONTACT, was the first to use such a device. He also said that CONTACT was an early game having a "ball return", referring to it's "Contact Hole", I suppose.
He then went on to say that some other games in the mid 30s had various forms of "kickout holes", but that the invention of the "bumper" By Bally in late 1936 caused this type of feature to virtually drop out of sight (bumpers becoming the rage) until the Exhibit games that I had mentioned.

The last thing that Harry mentioned during this conversation was that he had recently attended a special showing of the new Brooke Shields movie, "Tilt", the idea being that the producers wanted him, the inventor of the "tilt", to endorse the film. He said that the film wasn't too bad but that it's portrayal of 'pinball hustling' "certainly could not help the image of the industry". He ended by saying that the movie was somewhat boring
to him and that he hoped it would not be very popular and didn't think it would be. Well, we never really had a chance to find out since the film was never really released to theaters, but later made limited appearances on cable and regular television.

The next telephone call to Mr. Williams took place on July 2, 1979. I first asked him which games produced by his Automatic Amusements Co. in the 1930's were also produced by Bally (he had told me during my original visit with him that he let Bally produce some of his designs for Eastern and Mid-Western markets, while retaining the West Coast for Automatic Amusements). He replied that ACTION and SIGNAL in 1934 were the only ones.

I next read to him a list of Automatic Amusement games I had and asked him if it sounded complete. He replied that he also designed two games which were not on that list, namely CHEVRON and KNOCKOUT, both from 1935. He then told me about a game called MULTIPLE which he said he designed for Bally, in which a ball landing in a hole at the top of the playfield caused the values of other scoring holes to increase, as indicated in small "windows" located above those holes.

Harry next told me about his career after leaving California to go to Chicago in the mid Thirties. He said he went to work for Dave Rockola in 1935 and stayed there until sometime in 1937. He said while working there he met young designer Lyndon (Lyn) Durrant and that they became good friends. He then said that they both left Rockola in 1937 and went to Bally where they worked for a short time because, he said, they "did not like the conditions there". Harry then said that he and Lyn went over to Exhibit Supply in ‘38, and that that company was nearly bankrupt at the time. He went on to say however that Exhibit became one of the leaders of the industry by the early 1940's.

He said that at that time even Gottlieb copied some of Exhibit's games.
The last part of our conversation dealt with the beginnings of United Manufacturing during the war years. Harry said that he and Lyn left Exhibit and formed United just before we got into the war. He said he left United probably in late 1942 after they had produced 5 or 6 "conversion" games, starting his Williams Manufacturing (the forerunner of the current Williams Electronics) sometime in 1943.

He said that United's "conversions", unlike those from most of the other outfits producing such games during the war, had entirely new playfields. He went on to say that all the parts from the old games, from which these "conversions" were made, were dis-assembled, cleaned, and sometimes replated. He then said that the only wood used from the old games was the cabinets themselves.

Finally, I mentioned that upright style Williams conversion game, ZINGO, owned by a friend. He said he remembered that he made one mistake in the design of that game, that of putting a "slope" to it's playfield (instead of being perfectly vertical) because, he aid, it made it more difficult for the player to shoot the ball with any velocity.

The next time I talked to Harry was April 29, 1980. We first talked about two games produced by Exhibit Supply in the 30's, both of which were named LIGHTNING. Harry told me that the first LIGHTNING, which came out in 1934, was patterned after his pioneer electric action pingame CONTACT.

He said he sketched out the design of this game and made it such that it was not an exact copy of CONTACT. He then told me that Exhibit produced the game under a license agreement with Fred McClellen who's Pacific Amusement Mfg. Co. was producing CONTACT.

I then asked him if he remembered a later Exhibit game with the same name which I had recently purchased. He said he remembered he and Lyn Durrant designing a game by that name when they worked for Exhibit, but did not remember much about it. When I told him that the game had "electro-magnets" under the playfield which caused the ball to move in unusual ways, he said that he remembered a game he designed called BUTTONS which used that idea, and thought that LIGHTNING may have come after that. (AUTHOR'S NOTE: According to the information I currently have, LIGHTNING was first advertised in Billboard magazine in August of 1938, with BUTTONS being advertised several months later in October.)

Harry then said he remembered that principle being used in conjunction with rubber rebounds such that the ball would "bounce back and forth over a scoring button to add up score". He called that idea an "adder-upper", and said he thought it was automatically disabled when the 1000 scoring unit was advanced. He did not however say on what game that idea was used. In a final remark regarding LIGHTNING he said he remembered it having
a short scoreboard attached to the playfield and said Stoner had originated that cabinet style with their 1937 game ricochet.

I next asked Harry about the "free play" idea which had been originated by his young shop assistant in the early 1930's, bill Bellah. He said Bellah's device was mostly mechanical, and not he electrical device used for years utilizing a solenoid mounted beneath the coin chute (Harry remarking that he himself came up with that idea later on).

He said Bellah's invention used a metal drum, mounted near the front of the playfield, which had numbers on it (showing through a small window) indicating the number of "free play credits". He went on to say that this unit was mechanically linked to the coin chute to allow it to be pushed in without using a coin as long as credits were indicated. He said, however, that the drum was advanced, when replays were earned, by an electric solenoid.

Harry then went on to say that he believed that the first game to employ this device was made by Keeney, but he could not remember it's name. He said it was then used by Rockola on a game that he believed was called FLASH. Harry then said he remembered that game as having two indicating type counters, one for "replays" and the other to indicate a "winning number". He said that the "winning number" would start out as "1", and if the ball went into the number "1" hole, a replay would be scored and the "winning number" advanced to "2", etc. He remarked that in this way one replay was scored for each consecutive numbered hole into which balls landed. He again emphasized that the "free-play" Counter was mechanically linked to the coin chute.
The rest of this phone call dealt with Harry's current design efforts. He said Stern Electronics was trying to standardize on a longer playfield (23 7/8" by 46") as was used in their game BIG GAME. The last thing he told me was that he was currently working on a new game which he said would probably be called (of all things) LIGHTNING!

My next phone call to Harry, which occurred on march 24, 1982, dealt mainly with things that coin-op historian Dick Bueschel wanted me to ask him about. I first asked him if he remembered a game designer in the 30's named Bon McDougal (who Dick had heard about as having been rumored to be the actual designer of CONTACT). Harry said that he had known Bon, and that he did once work for Pacific Amusements (PAMCO), but that he started with the company at about the same time as he himself left, which was at the time of release of his last PAMCO design, MAJOR LEAGUE in late 1934. He said he thought Bon was responsible for the design of a series of 5 Pamco games, referred to as "the quintuplets", the names of which he could not remember. Finally he remarked that Bon was better known as a "wing walker" than a pinball designer.

Harry then asked if I had ever found one of his CONTACT games. When I told him I now owned one he asked if I would send him pictures of it, which I later did. He then asked which size game I had, and when I told him I had the "Junior" size (24" x 44") he told me that he made those in his own shop because Fred McClellen did not want to make that size in his. He then remarked that the idea of making a model of that size came from Los Angeles May Company department store.

I next asked Harry if he remembered a game, supposedly made by Exhibit, which had balls in the backboard (Dick Bueschel had found a patent for that game and wanted to know if it had ever been produced). Harry said he vaguely remembered the game, but not it's name. He then said he remembered he and Lyn Durrant working on it, but thought it may have only been a "prototype" and never released. He went on to say that many games never got past that stage.

When I read him the names on the patent, Eugene Kramer, Percy Shields, and Milton Gitelson he said he had heard of Kramer, had never heard of Gitelson, but had known Percy Shields very well. In fact, he said, Mr. Shields once worked for him in his shop on Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles.

While we were on the subject of "prototypes" Harry mentioned a "puck" game he once designed at Williams. He said it was called FLYING DUCKS which was build as a prototype only and never went into production. He also said that at the present time Stern Electronics had a game called CUE which never got past the prototype stage.
I next asked Harry about another early game designer, Ken Shyvers from Seattle, whom Dick Bueschel was interested in finding out about. He said that Ken was a very good designer,
and that he designed the first "score totalizer" in conjunction with Lyn Durrant around 1936. (When I later told Dick Bueschel about this he told me he had the patent for it!) Harry went on to say that Ken also designed CANNON FIRE for Mills and then remarked that Ken sold his designs on a royalty basis.

When I asked Harry if he had any pingames at home he replied he had two. One was a home game he designed for Brunswick, and the other SPLIT SECOND which he designed for Stern.

I next told him about Dick Bueschel interviewing the son of Earl Froom, one of the designers of the pioneer pingame WHIFFLE. Harry said that he had always wondered if WHIFFLE was the "first pingame". I then told him about Mr. Froom having a copy of an advertising film his father had made for WHIFFLE. Harry said that he thought that was very interesting and would like to see it someday. He then remarked that he had the capability of "converting" 16mm films to video tape.

The final topic of this phone call concerned the Stoner Company. I told Harry that I had just acquired a very nice 1938 Stoner pin called ELECTRO. He then told me that Ted Stoner was a "wood worker" and had a lot of wood-working equipment in his plant but did not have a router. He went on to say that Stoner had been given a contract to make prototypes for CONTACT. Harry said that he visited the Stoner plant at that time and saw they were drilling the holes. He said he got them a router but found out that they were still locating the hole positions "by hand". He then said that he once said to Ted Stoner "no wonder you talk about your 'custom aristocrat line'". Harry then told me that Stoner made 750 CONTACT prototypes.

This will conclude this installment of my detailing of my phone conversations with Harry Williams. The present article may seem somewhat short, but next time I will relate the phone call which dealt primarily with Harry's famous pioneer pingame, CONTACT. In that same article I will conclude this series with the final bits of information I received from Harry during our last telephone conversation before his untimely death. Most of
that conversation, however, contained "repeats" of things that he had discussed during earlier conversations.

The last two telephone calls I had with Harry Williams were both in 1982. The first of these was on April 7. I phoned Harry on that day to ask questions regarding his famous pioneer pingame - CONTACT. Before making the call I had prepared a list of questions to ask him regarding that subject.

I asked Harry if he had designed any games before CONTACT. He told me that he started in pingame design designing "replacement boards" new playfields which could be substituted on an existing game to be used on Mills' OFFICIAL. He said he did not put any names on these boards and that he sold them for $5 each. He went on to say that this gave him experience in determining the proper placement of the holes, pins, etc, on playfields. He then said that those playfields were "custom made".

Harry then told me that the first complete game he designed was called ADVANCE and that it was "entirely mechanical". He said that he sold it to Seeburg. He said that this game was the first to use his now famous "tilt" mechanism, and also the first pingame to have a "visible coin chute".

I next asked him about Fred McClellan and how he to into the pinball business, and about his Pacific Amusement Mfg. Co. (PAMCO). He said that Fred was originally a carburetor manufacturer and then decided to get into the games business. He then said that Fred started by selling two large pingames (MASTERPIECE and METROPOLITAN) which were actually made by a cabinet company, Fred acting as a "jobber" for the games.

I then asked Harry how he came up with the idea for the first "electric action" pingame, CONTACT. He told me that around that time he was running low on cash, receiving very little royalties from Seeburg for ADVANCE. He said he knew he needed a new idea to make some money. He then told me that he went to seek advice from a Christian Science practitioner who told him that his worries were "blocking his mind" and advised him to relax and meditate.

He went on to say that he took this advice and one day, while relaxing on a park bench, he all of a sudden got the idea for CONTACT. He said he quickly made a sketch of his idea on a large pad of green paper which he carried with him. Harry said that his new design required electric solenoids, and he wondered where he could obtain them. Then, as luck would have it, he discovered that there was a shop next door to his small shop which made just the items he needed.

Harry then built a model of his new game and showed it to Fred McClellan, whom he had heard about because of his selling of MASTERPIECE and METROPOLITAN. He said Fred thought the electric action was a great idea and wanted to buy the rights to it, and have the cabinet shop who had build his previous games build it. Harry said that he convinced Fred to do his own manufacturing rather than sub-contracting it to someone else. Fred agreed.

Harry went on to say that he actually made the "Junior" size in his small shop on Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles, with the other models being made in Fred's shop on Hope St. Later he said Fred opened a plant in Chicago and also had a sales office in Portland Oregon. He went on to say that CONTACT was produced for almost one year (an extremely long production run for any pingame, past or present) and he estimated that between 28 and 33 thousand games were actually manufactured. This, of course, included all four sizes of the game.

I then asked Harry about the use of his "tilt" and bells on CONTACT. He said the first models had neither attachment, but that both were added somewhere during the first 100 games produced. He then said that later models used an electric "pull-chain" tilt mechanism he designed, having an indicator on the playfield which pointed to either "OK" or "TILT". This incidentally, was the forerunner of the still current "plumb bob" tilt mechanism.

Finally I asked about the four models of CONTACT and their prices. He replied that the large model, SENIOR, which was 5 feet long, sold for $100 and that the "standard size" JUNIOR model sold for $75. Regarding the small "BABY" model, Harry said that the idea for making a small version of CONTACT came from Los Angeles' Bullocks Department Store. He said they wanted a "home model" to sell, and that they produced the BABY in both a coin-op and a non coin-op model for home use.
(NOTE: You may recall from one of my earlier phone conversations with Harry that he said it was the May Company Department Store. Well, his memory might have been a little hazy but at least it appears that one of the large Los Angeles department stores gave Harry the idea for his BABY model of CONTACT.)

That ended my call with Harry on that day. The information I obtained during that phone call was used as the basis for an article for the Summer 1982 issue of Pinball Collectors' Quarterly entitled "CONTACT;, Pinball Goes Electric".

The last phone call I had with Mr. Williams, before his untimely death in September 1983, took place on September 14, 1982. We first again talked about the two games called LIGHTNING with which Harry had been involved. He said that right after CONTACT came out Fred McClellan sold rights to Exhibit Supply to make a "copy" of CONTACT (which they called LIGHTNING) for a royalty of $1 per game. When Harry found out about this he said he told Fred that he was "crazy" since he paid Harry $3 per game to put out CONTACT.

Harry went on to say that he suggested to Exhibit that they make some changes to the playfield of LIGHTNING so it wouldn't be exactly the same as CONTACT. He then said that he offered to do that for them, and that Exhibit agreed. I asked Harry if he remembered getting a patent on CONTACT, or the game he later designed for Exhibit called BUTTONS, both of which Dick Bueschel had a copy of. He said he did not remember having a copy of either patent.

I again asked him if he remembered that 1938 Exhibit game which I used to own named LIGHTNING. That game had electro-magnets under the playfield which caused the ball to do all sorts of crazy antics, just like was used on BUTTONS. He said he couldn't remember that LIGHTNING particularly. When I then asked him if LIGHTNING could have been a "prototype" for BUTTONS, he said he didn't know.
The rest of this final phone conversation dealt with Harry's current involvement in the games business. Harry said he had designed a "pin-vid" (combination pinball and video game) and sold it to Gottlieb. He said he thought that they might call it either "THE CUBE" or "PAPARAZI". He then said that the video part of the game used a "Rubick's Cube" motif.

Harry then explained that this game had a pinball playfield in a video cabinet and used mirrors. He then said that the pinball and video play of the game was "fully integrated". He also told me that both Bally and Williams showed interest in his game, but that Gottlieb could use it's existing CAVEMAN tooling to produce it. Finally, Harry said that he thought there was great potential in videos. He said that he was currently designing video games for Stern Electronics, and also for a Japanese company which he did not name.

Updated Jun 05, 2005 Written by Russ Jensen
 

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