Stern factory tour

If you open up an arcade cabinet, you'll find it contains an awful lot of nothing. There's the power supply, the system board, the coin mechs, the monitor and of course all the switches and wiring for the controls, none of which takes up much space. Now, a pinball table, that's a different story. With the exception of the massive monitor, there's everything you get inside an arcade cabinet, plus all the extra wiring for all of the lights, the mechanics for the flippers, bumpers, kick backs, and other moving parts. It's a busy ol' place. If you have any interest in how these beautiful relics of the bygone days of arcades are constructed, then you'll want to check this out.

Stern are one of the very last great pinball manufacturers still making machines, certainly the last one in Chicago, the state that used to be home to Williams, Gottlieb, Midway and Bally. Over Christmas The Verge's Senior Editor, Chris Ziegler, got to tour their Illinois factory and see for himself the work that goes into those buzzing, beeping, pinging machines. As he says in his article, "I learn that each model of Stern's intricate, largely hand-built machines take as much as $1 million and a full year of design, development, and testing before a single unit is boxed up and sent out of the door."

See the full article and gallery here: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/16/3793274/stern-inside-one-of-the-last-pinball-factories-in-the-world

Or if you just want the gallery, go here: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/16/3792934/stern-pinball-factory-tour

MTW