The term "bumpers", to those uninitiated into the deeper mysteries of pinball, is often used as a catch-all term. As a profession pinball service technician, I've heard it in reference to almost every single part of a pinball machine. While it does make my job more difficult, I remain amazed by how one word can be used in such varied ways.
Today, I shall pull back the curtain to reveal the history, and usage, of the term "bumper" as it pertains to pinball machines; and address what has become a very common question being asked.
To begin, we must travel back several decades, nearly a century, to the 1930's. Pinball machines of the time were very simple affairs, with many models lacking ways of keeping score, and look more like Plinko from "The Price is Right" than what we think of as a pinball machine.
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1932 "Ballyhoo" by Bally Manufacturing
Photo courtesy of IPDB.org |
Jumping ahead a few years, we start to see "spring bumpers". These are little more than a wide spring anchored to the playfield, and wired to allow scoring. These tended to be very rudimentary in form (as described above) and in function, as the electrical element was often little more than a nail floating in the middle of a conductive ring. A ball hitting the spring would cause the nail to move, making electrical contact with the ring, completing the circuit. We can see this style of bumper on many machines from the 1930's and 1940's, such as Genco's "Cadillac" and "Archer" machines.
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1937 "Archer" by Genco Manufacturing
Photo courtesy of IPDB.org |
As time progressed, the spring bumper design gave way to what many pinball technicians, myself included, think of when hearing the term "dead bumper". While fundamentally similar to the older spring bumper, dead bumpers are assembled in a manner more similar to the pop bumpers that most people are familiar with. The two main components are the 'body', around which a rubber ring is placed to bounce the pinball away; and the 'skirt', which has a plastic 'tail' that activates a spoon-shaped switch. This skirt and spoon switch combination replaces the nail and ring used with spring bumpers. We can see this design present in Gottlieb's historic 1947 "Humpty Dumpty".
This style of bumper would continue to be used for decades, with examples showing up in pinball machines such as Gottlieb's 1976 "Buccaneer".
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1947 "Humpty Dumpty" by D. Gottlieb & Company
Original photo courtesy of IPDB.org |
In 1948, things got interesting with Williams Manufacturing Company's "Saratoga", the first machine to feature an active bumper. Back then, it was referred to as a "thumper bumper", but other names such as "jet bumper" and "pop bumper" would also be seen. What made this sort of bumper unique was the way the bumper pushed the ball away. Instead of relying on a metal spring, or rubber ring to push the ball away; "Saratoga" used a solenoid-powered metal ring to slam down towards the playfield, shoving the ball away. This core design is still used for pop bumpers to this day, with mostly minor changes to the electrical handling.
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1948 "Saratoga" by Williams Manufacturing Company
Original photo courtesy of IPDB.org |
Some of you at this point, might be asking yourself, "What does this history lesson have to do with Space Cadet?" A fine question, and one I shall answer right now; the elevated (upper) playfield on the lefthand side. This portion of Space Cadet is fairly straightforward: a few rollover switches, and 3 pop bumpers, nothing else going on. This section remains what could almost be considered the most controversial(?) area of the design up to this point. Let me explain...
Recently, I had finished a prototype of the upper playfield, and shared a video (see below) of my initial testing (using a Bally/Williams "Twilight Zone" as the driver for the switches and solenoids). One question I regularly received was with regards to the size/spacing of the pop bumpers.
The first question is whether or not the pop bumpers could be spaced out a bit more. At this moment, there is very little leeway on spacing for the upper playfield. This is a combination of how cozy everything up there already is, and making sure none of the electrical components on the main playfield short out to the upper playfield components.
The second question is whether or not I could get a smaller pop bumper assembly for this particular use case. Alas, the answer to that is no. At least not without reinventing the proverbial wheel. The biggest issue being the rod & ring assembly. This part of the pop bumper assembly as a whole hasn't been met with any significant changes, with the biggest change being a shift from screwing the rods and ring together, to having it be a single, riveted assembly. Because of this, and the time/financial costs of engineering and manufacturing a whole new assembly from scratch, Space Cadet is locked in to using standard, off-the-shelf pop bumper assemblies.
I hope you all enjoyed this dive into what a 'bumper' really is, and perhaps the next time you find yourself in an arcade with a malfunctioning pinball machine, you'll have a little bit of pinball jargon at the ready to explain what's going on.
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