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Silver Ball Century ep. 10 - 1968 - Switched-On Pinball

Table list for 1968: Palace Guard, Spin Wheel, Schuss, RockMakers, Paul Bunyan, Pit Stop, Cabaret, Four Seasons

The title here is a reference to Wendy Carlos, who released her groundbreaking, Grammy-winning synthesizer performance Switched-On Bach in 1968. She doesn't have that much to do with pinball, aside from the fact that the techniques she created would be known as "electronic music" and would become the musical style of lots of things, including all of pinball, by the '80s.

I was going to say a lot more about her, but in doing the background reading, I learned that she doesn't like people writing about her past at all, not even in the most admiring way. She also doesn't want her music to be available online. I want to go on for paragraphs about what an inspiration she is but I'll leave it there.

In pinball, 1968 also brings us another remarkable electronic thing: the French manufacturer Rally's line of "Fliptronic" pinball machines, including Schuss, appearing in tonight's episode.

The circuit boards inside the backbox of a Schuss machine

The inside of a Schuss backbox. Image by Max Lucas on IPDB.

This is not solid-state pinball yet. Those things mounted on the circuit board are still electromechanical relays. But there are also some electronic components: nixie tubes for the score display, and vacuum tubes for the sounds.

The resulting sounds are, let's say, not as harmonious as a Moog synthesizer.

Silver Ball Century streams tonight (Thursday, January 2) at 8 PM, on twitch.tv/arborelia. I'm going to stay with the Thursday schedule, and the next episode will be Thursday, January 16.

If you're enjoying this series, please consider sponsoring the stream on Patreon!

Tables in this episode

Here are the downloads for the tables we see recreated in VPX this episode. (As usual, you need free accounts on VPForums and VPUniverse to be able to download, which is a bit of a pain, but it's the only community-approved way to get tables for VPX.)

#pinball #silver ball century