WMS Industries

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WMS Industries, Inc.

logo
legal form Incorporated
founding 1943 (Williams Manufacturing Company)
Seat Waukegan , Illinois , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
Branch Software development

Former Williams Electronics logo

WMS Industries, Inc. (formerly Williams Electronics ) was one of the first to manufacture slot machines such as pinball machines , arcade games, and bowling machines. The headquarters are in Waukegan near Chicago .

Company history

Beat Time (1967), Silver Ball Museum in Asbury Park , NJ

The company goes back to the Williams Electronic Manufacturing Company founded in 1943 by Harry E. Williams. In 1958, Sam Stern took over the company. Harry Williams worked as a freelance designer and developer until his death in 1983. Also Bally and Stern took until the 1980s by Harry Williams-designed flippers on the market. The jagged, circled "W" was a company symbol from 1962, it was designed by the designer Jerry K. Kelley.

From 1968 the company was called Williams Electronics, Inc. and moved to a state-of-the-art building on California Avenue in Chicago. In 1979 Williams launched Flash, the most popular machine in the company's history to date, making it the market leader within a year.

In 2000, the production and sale of the previously popular pinball machines was discontinued due to the disappearance of interest in the machines. A big loss for many pinball machine hobbyists and collectors, since Williams had taken over the former market leader and rival Bally in 1988 and two companies disappeared at the same time.

In 2013, WMS Industries was acquired by Scientific Games Corporation .

Products

Williams innovations were among many others e.g. B. the drop target (1962), the long 3-inch pinball lever (1968), electronic background sound (1979 with Flash ), speech (1979 with Gorgar ), double-level playing fields (1980), ramps and toys on the playing fields (from 1984), and game programs that adapted to the skill of the player (from 1986 with high speed ).

The first big success for Williams in Germany was the Flipper Big Chief in 1965 , whose popularity was far surpassed by À-Go-Go in 1966 . The 1967 Shangri-La was also a very successful and popular pinball machine. In the 1970s, the Honey (1972), Oxo (1973) and Space Mission (1976) models were among the most successful pinball machines. In 1979 and 1980 Williams presented Flash, Gorgar and Firepower, each with high editions of nearly 20,000 copies, the most popular devices of the time and ousted Bally from the top of the market.

The most famous Williams pinball machines of today are High Speed ​​II: The Getaway , Medieval Madness (you can still meet both of them in use today) and other titles such as Funhouse or Junk Yard . Williams achieved further technical highlights with the pinball machines Earthshaker (1989) and Whirlwind (1990). Successful arcade games were Defender (computer game) , Joust , Robotron: 2084 and Moon Patrol , the latter licensed by Irem .

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