Sharpshooter

Back in 1979, when I was about 13 years old, my father ran a pinball machine manufacturing facility in Addison, IL for a company called Game Plan Inc. It produced between three and four different machines at a time. That meant that there was always at least one section of the plant in flux at any given point. New lines were always being set up and the line workers trained on them. The line workers were almost all Hispanic women. My father proved that he was a sheer genius at allocating resources and manufacturing. He would make 4’ x 4’ detailed drawing of the plant and move things around to plan the layout. 1979 paper CAD.

The equipment was awesome. The wire striping machine was enormous. It sat in its own area of the building that was easily 100’ square. The cooling towers went up 40’ where the wire was carried up a tube, run through an oven and carried back down. I always loved the paint shop where they painted the cabinets. Some Saturdays I would get electronics lessons from one of the engineers.

A new line was being laid out and the line workers were being trained. I was at the plant with my dad because I was out of school. He told me that he’d pay me $1.00 an hour to learn the factory. I agreed.

This new line started with a 5 piece assembly. He sat me down in front of the 5 bins of pieces and an example of the finished product. Next to that was another example that I could disassemble. He told me to see how fast I could build it. He said he’d be back in a half hour.

At a half an hour, he came back with a stopwatch. “Ok, I’m going time you on 10. We’ll take the average. “Can I pee first?” I asked. He smiled at me and said “no.”, we’ll try it under duress, then laughed. I went to pee. Now that I wasn’t under duress, I was pretty sure I could do better than previously. Overall, my times were about 89 seconds give or take a few. “So, if I set the goal to 90 seconds, they should be able to meet it.” He said.

The next day, they brought over the women that were going to be on the line. My dad put a specific woman in the #1 position and explained that the goal to assemble was 90 seconds. After a half an hour of practice she was at about 150. He told her that the goal was 90. She said that she wanted to see the foreman. My father complied. The foreman came over and looked at the assembled part, and started assembling one out of the bins. My father timed him. 110 seconds. “On your first try. Not bad.” My father said. “How did you come up with 90 seconds?” the foreman asked my father. My dad smiled and pointed at me. “Do you want to see the time sheets?” my father asked. “No” said the foreman. He told the ladies to practice.

Sharpshooter was the new flagship machine of the company. It was an all-solid-state machine with electronic sound effects and light controllers. It was microprocessor controlled and was state of the art. The development that had gone into the machine, and the investment was high. My father was setting up a larger than typical area for the line expecting a higher-than-average demand. A lot was riding on this game.

Sharpshooter had many complex mechanical assemblies from drop targets to kick holes and flippers. All of the sub-assemblies had to be built up ahead of time and installed onto the playfield as it went down the 150 foot line on rollers. My father put me in charge of setting up the drop target array and training people how to assemble it. Next, I was to develop the method for the flipper assemblies. No one cared that I was so young, they all called me “Mr. Scott” and I attempted to communicate in Spanish with them.

The really fun task was to get paid a dollar an hour to try to damage the machine in any way possible without tools, with a $10 bonus if I succeeded. It was Winter in Chicago, and the engineering area that the test machine was setup in was carpeted. I got an idea. I backed up across the room and shuffled my feet up to the machine and touched the stainless cash box door. A big arc of static electricity jumped from my finger to the machine and all of the displays went blank. This was the first solid state machine made, and shielding against static was a new concept. I power cycled the machine and repeated the process a few times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke or that I’d killed it completely, then went and got my father. I demonstrated for him. He was floored.  It took engineering a month to resolve the issue. To test it, they bought a Vande Graff machine to supply the sparks.

Sharpshooter was a hit. At the American Game convention (AMOA), it garnered lots of praise and attention, and sales. The #00 sharpshooter that was in engineering my father took home and stained the raw plywood cabinet to finish it. We played it for years and my brother still has it in his home.

About 20 years ago, I decided to find a Sharpshooter. It took me a long time, but I found one in Harrisburg Pennsylvania. I rented a van and we went for a ride. I didn’t have room in the house at the time, so I set it up out in the garage. When you turned the machine on, it played a series of simulated gunshots and a tune. I had it plugged in so that when I turned the overhead lights on, it powered up. I invited my parents over to the house, and asked them out to the garage. I waited until everyone was inside and turned the overhead lights on. The Sharpshooter theme rang out. My father was gob smacked. “Where did you get that?” he stuttered. And I told him the story.

What he and I realized in talking was that in all the time that I worked at the plant, I worked on most of the different sub-assemblies and assemblies of the Sharpshooter line. The odds are very high that I worked on this very machine in some way or another, almost 50 years ago. It is currently in my office.