Automatic Amusements Company

Automatic Amusements Company was the first company of Harry Williams, one of the most consequential figures in pinball history. Operating from Los Angeles, California between 1932 and 1935, this small outfit served as the laboratory where Williams developed ideas that would reshape the entire industry.

The company’s earliest known game, Old Orchard (1932), was a Pure Mechanical table. But it was Advance (1933) that announced Williams as a force: his first complete design, it introduced both the tilt mechanism — his answer to players who shook and shoved the cabinet — and the visible coin chute. These innovations became standard across the industry within months. Williams then pushed into Electromechanical territory with Signal (1934) and Action (Sr) (1934), the latter produced under a manufacturing agreement with Bally that gave Bally distribution rights to both junior and senior cabinet sizes. By 1935, Automatic Amusements was producing a rapid succession of EM games, including Triangle (1935) — the first Williams design with a light-up backboard — and Dealer (1935), which pitted the player against an automatic dealer score.

The company produced at least fourteen known games before ceasing operations in 1935. Williams moved on to design the groundbreaking Contact (Senior) (1933) for Pacific Manufacturing Corporation, and ultimately founded Williams in Chicago in 1943 — carrying forward the inventive spirit that had its origins on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles.