hey everyone Tyler with make magazine
and I'm here at Maker Faire Denver and
I've just been checking out the fun with
pinball exhibit this is an exhibit
created by Mark Gibson and what it is is
an exploration of each and every
component that goes into these old-style
electromechanical pinball machines these
aren't the you know computer and servo
controlled machines that you might know
from today but these are all entirely
mechanical still powered by solenoids
but all of the memory and state of the
game in the machine is stored in
mechanisms in the circuit state and just
really really simple mechanics and here
is broken out every single component of
these machines so you can see how they
work electrically and mechanically so
this exhibit is built from retired used
pinball machine parts I restore pinball
machines for fun and all these parts
have come out of games at one point or
another
and rather than check them I've tried to
show people how clever and creative they
were by letting them interact with him I
wired them up by click buttons on them
and I try to make them as visible and
tangible as I can but go ahead people
experiment and try them out starting in
the mid 70s pinball machines switched
over like everything else from
electromechanical technology to
solid-state technology which essentially
means that they started using
transistors for everything and since
then it's all gotten more and more
elaborate electric electronics and
computers on the inside the motion
generated in the pinball machine is
generally done with solenoids still to
this day they're controlled by computers
now but they're the same solenoids that
I'm using here and what's different is
that the control of the game the rules
the process the progression through the
game is all controlled with this
technology with relays and wiring those
are the programs that were available so
you control the game through switches
motors steppers wiring the contacts so
the smaller pieces that are just the
size of a half of pizza they are
typically one assembly that was pulled
out of a game at some point and replaced
so they all have somewhere on them they
all have some aides on them but the
smaller pieces are just trying to show
one device how it would have worked how
you would have interacted with it what
it would have accomplished in the game
for you the stuff in the middle that
it's a lot more explanation that stuff
is assembled from a bunch of simpler
pieces I've devised these games and
invented the rule sets and cobbled them
together from pieces from different
games and come up with something kind of
new you know in the maker spirit a good
friend of mine gave me
part of an old baseball game he just had
the vertical head of the game he the
rest of the game was lost in history it
was separated at some point and they
were he was incomplete he had no use for
it and he knows that i tinker with this
stuff so he gave me the head and I've
always been fascinated by that baseball
running man unit that's called but you
only ever see the men themselves above
the top above the play field in the
games I wanted to show the beauty and
the intricacy of what's going on
underneath but I didn't want to just
connect it up to some buttons that you
could hit the button the man would run I
wanted it to be more engaging and more
interactive so I devised the rules and
the mechanisms and how you play that
thing from scratch and it took a few
iterations to sort of get the right
combination of it's fun but it's
challenging and it's interesting and
it's interactive it took a while to work
all that out it took about nine months
all together
pull that all together so all of these
devices I've put up on a website because
not everybody can come to Maker Faire so
I have a website fun with pinball comm
it's all one word run together fun
whippin wall and there you're gonna find
all these devices they'll have have
pictures of these short videos better
explanations and are available here in
person there's also some background
material on the website there's a little
bit of educational material some
resources for people are historians and
collectors that sort of thing things
that is just me personally I kind of
throw on to give it more context of our
background so there are plenty of good
resources online in particular if you
live in a larger metropolitan area
there's certainly collectors nearby so I
would start going online and figuring
out if there are people close by or even
people online there are places where you
can go and ask specific questions and
people will talk you through it and make
suggestions have you tried this you can
fix that if you show an interest in
learning you get a much better response
from the community who wants to help you
to learn if you just got a game is that
doesn't work what can I do I just want
to play it you're likely to get less
help because it's going to be harder to
teach you how to fix it if you're not
motivated to learn
right and so showing a little bit of
interest showing I've tried this and it
didn't work what else can I try
gets a much better response from the
crowd because they want to help you they
want to help you learn right and that's
kind of why we're here we're trying to
help you learn something it's not about
learning involved it's learning that I
can study something I can understand how
it works
I can decompose it into smaller parts
and understand it simpler pieces right
the pinball is really just the hook it's
the carrot to get you through the door
and if I've got your attention and
looking at something then maybe you'll
take that away to say well I figured
that out that wasn't so bad
wasn't so hard maybe I can figure that
out whatever that is to you you know
it's a car it's a computer it's a how to
make a batch of cookies maybe I can
figure that out right so it's more of
that motivation a curiosity that I'm
trying to stir up and not teach you the
inside the pinball pinball is just a
tool
you