I was doing some research on an old table called 'Bag-a-Ball' that I am currently recreating. I was having no joy at finding about the game, until I discovered the joy of the U.S Patent office website.
They have scans of all the patents from the last 200 years, and a helpful guide to finding the section you would need. You can only search by patent number or category however, so ideally you need the patent number. If not, you can do what I did and search under specific categories.
Here's a guide to using the advanced search
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/help/helpadv.htm
And here's the search engine itself
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-adv.htm
You'll be amazed at how much useful information there is here. Here's a few things to look at to get you started, type the code in as directed, set the year to be '1790 to present' and then press search. Once you get the result, click on 'images'.
The first spring loaded, sloped Bagatelle - PN/115357
An interesting diagram of a ball launcher - PN/3441279
A Bowling type game PN/2173865
Another Bagatelle - PN/3224775
Bag-a-Ball - PN/2027244
...there are hundreds, if not thousands of entries of interest. Most pinball games are under class 273, amusement devices:games
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc273/sched273.htm
in particular, sub class 121R, 124R and 129R are useful. Try putting these into the search engine:
CCL/273/121R
CCL/273/124R
CCL/273/129R
for lots of related stuff.
Remember, many patents, especially later ones, are just pinball components, but they do sometimes go into detail about how the component will fit into a table. All in all, this is invaluable information and an amazing resource that opens up the history of pinball to everyone. I think we should consider compiling a list of interesting patents, especially if we find the ones for certain tables.
Have fun with it.
regards
Highrise
They have scans of all the patents from the last 200 years, and a helpful guide to finding the section you would need. You can only search by patent number or category however, so ideally you need the patent number. If not, you can do what I did and search under specific categories.
Here's a guide to using the advanced search
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/help/helpadv.htm
And here's the search engine itself
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-adv.htm
You'll be amazed at how much useful information there is here. Here's a few things to look at to get you started, type the code in as directed, set the year to be '1790 to present' and then press search. Once you get the result, click on 'images'.
The first spring loaded, sloped Bagatelle - PN/115357
An interesting diagram of a ball launcher - PN/3441279
A Bowling type game PN/2173865
Another Bagatelle - PN/3224775
Bag-a-Ball - PN/2027244
...there are hundreds, if not thousands of entries of interest. Most pinball games are under class 273, amusement devices:games
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc273/sched273.htm
in particular, sub class 121R, 124R and 129R are useful. Try putting these into the search engine:
CCL/273/121R
CCL/273/124R
CCL/273/129R
for lots of related stuff.
Remember, many patents, especially later ones, are just pinball components, but they do sometimes go into detail about how the component will fit into a table. All in all, this is invaluable information and an amazing resource that opens up the history of pinball to everyone. I think we should consider compiling a list of interesting patents, especially if we find the ones for certain tables.
Have fun with it.
regards
Highrise
