ABSTRACT
On September 26, 1974, Bally executive vice president of technology John Britz led a delegation to Milwaukee and was ushered into a room at the offices of Dave Nutting Associates containing two Bally Flicker pinball tables that Dave Nutting had received from the company the month before. The two tables looked identical save for one tiny detail: the typical scoring reels on one machine had been replaced by a readout composed of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Nutting demonstrated both machines, noting how they played and behaved exactly the same. Then came the dramatic reveal as the games were opened, and the one with the LED readout contained just a small circuit board connected to a few wires as opposed to the rat’s nest of wires, relays, steppers, and other parts one would expect to find in a pinball cabinet. The shocked Bally executives immediately began searching the room for the giant computer that must have been running this specially modified machine only to discover that all the components were arrayed on that single board inside the nearly empty cabinet. The future of pinball had arrived.
