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United History
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History of the United Manufacturing Company

The modern pinball industry took off during the Depression era, and Harry Williams was one of the industry's first great game designers. In 1929, Williams graduated from Stanford University; five years later, his name was important enough to be a selling point in advertisements. Working for Los Angeles-based Pacific Amusements Company, Williams designed the first electromechanical pinball machine in 1933. That game, called "Contact," featured two solenoid-powered contact holes, which gave points when the pinball landed in them. The solenoid quickly became an industry standard, used to operate a variety of features on the pinball playing field. "Contact" was also the first pinball machine to feature electrically generated sound when Williams attached a doorbell to the machine. These innovations created boom years for the entire industry through the Depression.

While working for Pacific Amusements, Williams also designed games for other pinball makers, including Bally and Rock-Ola in Chicago. Williams was responsible for several more important innovations, including the kicker, the pedestal tilt, and pendulum tilt mechanisms. For years, pinball had been, for the most part, a game of chance, as the player had little influence over the course the ball took. Williams's designs were among the first to introduce skill elements to the game. He was also instrumental in introducing the first replay feature, allowing the player to compete for extra balls and free games, rather than prizes. This would be important for the entire industry, as more and more communities and states outlawed pinball as a game of chance.

Williams moved to Chicago, the center of the coin-operated amusements industry, in 1936, and for the next several years designed games for Bally, Rock-Ola, and other pinball manufacturers. World War II came close to shutting down the pinball industry, however, as raw materials made it impossible to build new machines. The war would later prove important to the industry in another way, as American GIs brought pinball machines to other countries, opening an international market that at times rivaled the market in the United States. In 1941, Williams joined with Lyn Durant, a designer who also had worked for Bally and Exhibit, to form the United Manufacturing Company. Their business was almost entirely in reconditioning and redesigning old machines.

Harry and Lyn decided to try converting old games to new ones without using additional electrical or mechanical parts which could not even be obtained for non-war essential purposes. The United conversions utilized the electrical and mechanical parts, and the wooden cabinets, of the old games. New playfields and backglasses were made. In addition, they contracted with Advertising Posters Co. (the major game "artwork" company in Chicago from the 1930s to the present time) to provide "decals" to be used to add new artwork to the sides of the old cabinets. The results were remarkable, a "new" game from an obsolete one without using any war critical materials.

In less than a year Harry Williams had sold his share of United to Lyn Durant and went on to form a new company, Williams Manufacturing. United continued building conversions, producing around a dozen different models during the war. At war's end, United began manufacturing new pingames (and later shuffle alleys, "bingos," and other games) up into the fifties. Back To United


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