''Humpty Dumpty'' is a

pinball Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails call ...

machine released by

Gottlieb Gottlieb (formerly D. Gottlieb & Co.) was an American arcade game corporation based in Chicago, Illinois. History The main office and plant was located at 1140-50 N. Kostner Avenue until the early 1970s when a new modern plant and office was lo ...

on October 25, 1947. Named after

Humpty Dumpty Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. ...

, the nursery rhyme character, it is the first pinball machine to include flippers — invented by Harry Mabs — distinguishing it from earlier

bagatelle Bagatelle (from the Château de Bagatelle) is a billiards-derived indoor table game, the object of which is to get a number of balls (set at nine in the 19th century) past wooden pins (which act as obstacles) into holes that are guarded by wooden ...

game machines.

Description

''Humpty Dumpty'' had six of these flippers, referred to as "flipper bumpers" by the company. However, unlike modern pinball tables, they faced outward instead of inward and were not placed at the bottom of the table near the main outhole. Like all early pinball tables, ''Humpty Dumpty'' was constructed with

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...

and had backlit scoring in preset units of scoring rather than mechanical reel or electronic

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...

scoring.

Design team

* Concept: Harry Mabs * Game Design: Harry Mabs * Mechanics: Harry Mabs * Artwork: Roy Parker * Animation: Harry Mabs

Digital version

The table was virtually recreated in pinball simulation video game, ''

Microsoft Pinball Arcade ''Microsoft Pinball Arcade'' is a pinball video game from Microsoft. It was released on December 15, 1998 for Microsoft Windows and in 2001 for the Game Boy Color. The game is a collection of seven real pinball tables licensed by Gottlieb. These ...

'', although it was not included in the

Game Boy Color The (commonly abbreviated as GBC) is a handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on October 21, 1998 and to international markets that November. It is the successor to the Game Boy and is part of the Game ...

version of that game.

References

External links

* Gottlieb pinball machines 1947 pinball machines {{pinball-stub