The Perpetual Ball Tube
From the early bone or composite balls, to shiny chromium-steel ball bearings, the
vast majority of wall machine games utilise balls as projectiles. If the aim of the game
is to drop a ball from the top of the playfield, it has to get there in the first place!
The early wall machines from the 1890s employed the player's coin as a projectile, and
were either drop case machines or the type broadly described as shooters. The earliest
machine 'with balls' I have encountered was produced by Haydon & Urry, I would guess
in the late 1890s or around the tum of the century. Called Miniature Billiards, it is very
similar in design to the Tivoli drop case machines of the same era. The ball is fired to the
top of the playfield in much the same way as the player's penny is fired in the Tivoli, i.e.
by a spring-loaded plunger, which the player actuates with a trigger on the front of the
machine.
This method of raising balls to the top of the playfield, although somewhat crude, is
evident in many machines produced in the ensuing decades, particularly some of the
huge variety of games manufactured by BMCo in the 1930s. It does however have one
inherent drawback; it is not really suited to multi ball machines, and gives rise to two
potential problems. First, where the game employs more than one ball, the balls have to
be fed individually to the plunger, which necessitates an extra knob on the front of the
machine. As an operator of vintage machines, I know only too well that normally sane,
rational, intelligent punters suddenly tum into dribbling imbeciles when confronted with
a machine with too many knobs (actually, a machine with just knob in many cases).
Second, when the afore mentioned imbecile starts ' fiddling' , there is always the risk, if
not absolute certainty, that more than one ball will get fed to the plunger, thus resulting in
balls getting jammed. Some machines were better designed than others, with some
incorporating mechanisms intended to prevent more than one ball being fed at the same
time; but none were idiot-proof.
There was a solution though, an ingenious method of ball delivery that is, if such a
thing exists, idiot proof; a mechanism that can deliver any number of balls in a single
game, and will only do so one at a time, and with only one knob. It is a mechanism that I
have always admired for its sheer ingenuity, which I call the Perpetual Ball Tube.
The mechanism consists of a tube mounted vertically, full with balls; the number of
which are extra to those in the game. Therefore, if the player has four balls to play, the
machine must contain those four balls, plus all the balls in the tube. The stack of balls
inside the tube is supported at the bottom by a pawl, under spring tension, which
protrudes into the tube through an aperture in its side. Below the pawl is a plunger, which
is free to move up and down the bottom section of the tube, activated via a crank
connected to the ball feed knob on the front of the machine.
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