The Roanoke Pinball Museum will open next week in Roanoke. Lined wall to wall with pinball machines dating back to the 40s and into this century, visitors will travel through time, following the path of a small silver ball. Organizers hope the museum will become a popular site for field trips, saying pinball machines are more scientific than you might think.
There’s an old saying: Buy a girl a dress, and she looks pretty for one night; buy her boyfriend a pinball machine and she looks pretty for life.
The saying might be old, but the games are older. Pinball machines as we know them today were invented in 1947. Before then, many similar games had been invented, dating back to France in the late 1700s.. But with the introduction of electricity and player-controlled flippers, the modern pinball machine was born.
“We have some of the newer machines like Six Million Dollar Man- these are the solid-state pinballs. A lot of people are excited about these ones, and when you really come in and start playing I was the same way too. I’m really excited about these newer machines but these sixties and seventies machines are a lot of fun to play.”
It’s that combination of nostalgia and entertainment that Mackereth thinks will attract generations to the museum, helping the pinball era make its way back into cultural relevancy…
He credits the idea for the museum to board member Steve Bowery.
“He approached the center about the idea of opening up a pinball museum. He had ten in his collection that he would donate and then we would, kind of, try to supply the rest. Our goal was 25- we wanted 25 to open. We kind of overshot that, which is good.”
The museum will actually open with 46 machines, dating all the way back to 1948, thanks to an outpouring of community support.
“We’ve actually had machines that were donated through the community. People that had a pinball machine in their basement that wasn’t really function said, ‘Hey, I’ll donate it to you if you guys can get it up and running.’ Then the public has access to come and play and then they feel good because their pinball machine is getting played by the next generation and instead of just taking up storage, its actually having a life.”
They may have been designed for entertainment, but pinball machines have a long history of combining amusement with education.
The museum will also use the machines for educational purposes. Co-organizer Rachel Hopkins described how the allure of playing games could be turned into a learning experience.
“I really believe in learning through play. We provide the teacher with resources. Anything from building your own pinball machine from recycled materials to key concepts in science.”
They even hired a physicist to design an SOL-compliant curriculum around the science of pinball.
Day tickets and year-long memberships are available. Click here for more information.
