Quoted from justincasekazoo:Oh, look at that! Thank you for satisfying my curiosity.
I seem to remember in Dick Bueschel's Encyclopedia of Pinball that there was some reference to the ball kicker in the trade literature at the time. Everyone was trying to lay claim to the "kicker" idea because it had been patented. (Or, if it hadn't been patented yet, it would be.) I'm going to go find this passage so I can get it right...
Daval's game immediately following American Beauty was Big Bertha, another game with a kicker to fire balls uphill.
Here's what Bueschel writes:
"Realizing that Bally was ahead of them, and the original game maker [of a game with kickers that Bally was copying, probably Shyvers's Cannon Fire] was ahead of Bally, Daval made no attempt to patent Big Bertha. Instead, they opted to establish a link between their cannon games and the latest model of American Beauty, suggesting that they owned prior art on the basis that one game led to the other. 'The Daval Manufacturing Company will announce in a few days their new catapult type machine Big Bertha on which they have been experimenting for several months. The catapult idea first appeared on the Daval American Beauty machine. A. S. Douglis [president of Daval] showed The Coin Machine Journal plans for a game of this type several months ago and after considerable experimentation and development the finished product will now appear as a battlefield game with reproduction of heavy duty firing equipment which will project the balls counterwise to the pitch of the machine.'
"In making the desired connection, they made the strong point that the preceding Daval game shot balls uphill. 'The experimental department of the firm has just completed a new game for which dies and jigs are already in preparation. The game will be presented to the coin machine market on or about Aug. 1. It will be known as Big Bertha and will embody the catapult feature now found on the American Beauty in a different and much more intriguing manner. The action will be up the board as in the present catapult shot on the American Beauty game. Larger balls will be used. Entirely different mechanism is being constructed and many of the outstanding features will be entirely new to the pinball industry. The tremendous popularity of the catapult shot, the firm states, has been the reason for the further continuance of the idea in this new form of a Big Bertha game.' What Daval neglected to mention was that the American Beauty catapult was mechanical, whereas the Big Bertha kick was electrical, with little or no true relationship between the two features."
So this raises questions. Never mind that there are two versions of American Beauty, one of which has no "catapult" on the playfield at all. This is the "Three Vases" version. Clearly Bueschel was not aware of a version of American Beauty with an electric kicker. Are there two versions with a kicker, one mechanical and one electric? I've not seen any of these games in the wild to have an idea. Perhaps American Beauty was in production with a mechanical kicker, and once Daval got wind of electric kickers, they started producing American Beauty with such, while working on the design for the next game, Big Bertha.
I don't know, and this is probably more consideration than anyone is interested in giving, haha. cait001, can you provide any insight or thoughts on this? You're the only living pin historian I know of.
Jappie, I look forward to seeing the restoration and the video when it's complete!