Bingo Pinballs
This Page Last Updated 08-09-2010 |
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~ Donald E. Hooker – Bally Bingo Designer ~ ~ A handful of patents to help show Don’s company history
~ -----------------------------------------------------------
~ Misc History ~ DON HOOKER After
the opening remarks by show producer Rob Burk, the first seminar speaker was
introduced. He was Don Hooker,
former designer of "bingo type" pinballs for Bally, who is now 82
years of age. Mr. Hooker began by
stating that he first joined the games industry in 1936 when he went to work
for Pacific Amusement Manufacturing Co. (better known as PAMCO) where he
worked until 1938. He recalled
working on a game at PAMCO called LITE-A-LINE which was somewhat similar to
the bingo pinballs he designed twenty years later at Bally. Sometime later (he did not mention the
exact year, but it may have been 1938 when he left PAMCO) he went to work for
Bally. He mentioned working on
the "one-ball" horserace pin CITATION, which came out in 1949. He remembered that it had
"guaranteed advancing odds" (Author's note: It was the first "one-ball"
with that feature) like the bingos which came out later. Mr.
Hooker then said that a man named Bernie Bernside came up with the idea of
the "Reflex Unit" which was used in the later "one-balls"
and all of the "bingos".
The purpose of this unit was to 'tighten up' Or 'loosen up' the payout
chances for the player based on how well the game had been paying out in the
past. This was a marvelous
invention and many people connected with bingos don't have any idea how it
works, certainly not the players. He
talked about bingos having very complex electro- mechanical systems. He said they developed automatic test
equipment to test the games in the factory. He also said Bally had quite a few
years of big production of bingos (the mid 1950s) until "the government
declared bingos were gambling devices." (Author's note: he was
apparently referring to the "Korpran Decision" of the Supreme Court
in 1957 declaring bingo pinballs to be subject to the Johnson Act.) The players, he said, still liked the
bingos but "the Government said 'no' ". Finally he talked about testing the games
in New Orleans. He also said he
left Bally in the early 1970s and he and a partner designed a dice game which
Bally bought from them. He then
went back to Bally until around 1980 when he finally retired. He said he was the primary designer of
most of the Bally bingos. ~ DON
HOOKER
“They started bringing back people who know
games, and it’s a great place now. I’m as happy now as I’ve
ever been before,” said Tiberio, who moved from mechanical engineer
into the game development arena nearly four decades ago when game developer
Don Hooker asked Tiberio to look at the math of a proof of a game later
called Golden Bars. “The next thing I know, I found a lot of errors in
it, so I brought it back to him, and two weeks later he asked me if I would
like to do the math, and from there it grew to designing games.” In
Marian Green’s - 70 Years of great games
~ Billboard Magazine Oct 7th 1944
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Link>>> http://danny.cdyn.com/pamco1.htm Pinball Designers, Don
Hooker ~ |
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