About the Collection
This collection of data has been collected by students from Illinois Institute of Technology and is saved within the library’s respiratory. Each group of students have done research relating to Chicago’s coin-op industry and has collected data from their findings. The point of this collection website is to give these groups a platform for their data and makes them more available to the public.
All the data that has been collected consits of interviews, photos, and locations of industries that the students visted.
Collection History
Chicago has a long history of coin-operated machines, such as arcade game machines, pinball machines, and jukeboxes. In the early 20th century, Chicago became the top dog of the coin-op industry, with companies innovating new ways to entertain people in bars, restaurants, and arcades. When it came to coin-operated entertainment the two big ones are arcade machines and pinball machines.
Pinball was one of the first big coin-op successes, with companies like Bally, Williams, and Gottlieb pioneering the industry. The city’s manufacturers experimented with mechanical and electrical features, leading to innovations like flippers, bumpers, and later digital displays. Pinball thrived in the mid-20th century, despite facing bans in some places due to its association with gambling.
Alongside pinball, Chicago played a huge role in video game history. Companies like Midway, Williams, and Stern helped usher in the golden age of arcade gaming in the 1970s and ‘80s. Midway was responsible for bringing Space Invaders to the U.S. and later developed classics like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam. Williams produced Defender and Joust, helping to define the arcade experience.
Even today, Chicago’s influence on the coin-op industry remains strong, with companies like Stern still producing pinball machines and the city’s arcades preserving its legacy. The history of coin-op in Chicago is a story of innovation, controversy, and entertainment that shaped gaming as we know it.
Technical Credits - CollectionBuilder
This digital collection is built with CollectionBuilder, an open source framework for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that is developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-Static methodology.
The site started from the CollectionBuilder-GH template which utilizes the static website generator Jekyll and GitHub Pages to build and host digital collections and exhibits.