My mind raced when I first saw this post up on my local board. Coin Craft Canada? A CANADIAN MADE pinball machine from the pre-war days? There were other Canadian companies that had dabbled, but this seemed like a serious contender.
After a quick analysis, my hope was quickly dashed. This wasn't exactly a Canadian made pinball, but what was it exactly? In this post I want to dive into my research into Coin Craft Canada and the machine One Two Three.
Here's what we do know: One-Two-Three aka "One Two Three" aka "1-2-3" was advertised for sale in late 1935 by Peo, a company out of New York that had been involved in trade stimulators, and had a few interesting forays into the pinball market.
We can follow this game over the span of 8 months of mentions in Billboard magazine:
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| 1935-11-09: One-Two-Three is announced. It should be noted that almost every industry quote like the above braggadocio is a fabrication. It's all marketing, all the time. |
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| 1935-11-16: One-Two-Three is announced as the first of a new series of (I'm assuming) budget games that would come out every 2 weeks. Very ambitious |
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| 1935-11-30: 1-2-3 is unveiled in print, and available for order! $39.50 |
There are not other images of this machine online so this ad is great because it shows the 10 marbles in the lower bonus area, and says it is a 5-ball game. It also shows us that (at one point at least) it had a back marquee designed/made for it.
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| 1936-03-28: reconditioned One-Two-Three machines can be had for $10, just 4 months after release |
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| 1936-08-22: One, Two, Three is available for $4.90 just 10 months later. Down from $39.50 |
But here we have a One Two Three that has this wonderful little sticker on it, claiming "Made by Coin Craft Canada"
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| Peo branded shooter |
We can see this is the same shooter/lifter plate as used in Peo's Pigskin from 1934:
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| coin mech listed as 1933 patent |
First I want to talk about the game a bit.
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| I assume this is a lamp socket |
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| Travel Round The World from 1935 |
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| wear halo visible |
The One-Two-Three table here is using half the playfield to just count bonus points, so not very efficient. A similar bonus idea was done by Peo in the 1935 game (sequel to Pigskin) All American Football. The balls are just bonus counters after all, so it's odd Peo chose to essentially do the same thing with half of the playfield. This Peo backbox bonus count was still popular 40+ years later with a handful of games like Top Score and Super Soccer.
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| Bumper |
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| Credit |
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| Ginger |
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| Harvest Moon |
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| Pockets |
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| Preakness |
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| Top Hat |
So that perhaps tells us that this was perhaps a prototype copy or a "saleman's sample" copy to try and drum up business. The ad copy for 1-2-3 doesn't show any side art, but also photos in ads don't always represent the final product.
While it's kind of suspicious that the 1935 article on 1-2-3 mentioned it was "mechanically perfect", we can tell this one certainly was not.
The bonus mech has an added flag spring, which you can see has scraped the playfield a bunch. An inherent design flaw here is that if a ball is kicked up to the right, if it doesn't make it into the bonus channel properly it will fall back down to the kicker. Another ball will be in the kicker lane, making the next shot probably impossible.
I'm not really sure what problem the flag spring could possibly be solving here, to be honest. I would think a one-way gate above the 10,000 score would be useful, but if a ball didn't make it up there we'd be left with the same issue.
Let's move on to Coin Craft Canada and see what we can learn.
Coin Craft Canada appears to have existed from around 1935 to 1948, which is actually far longer than most coinop companies of that era.
1935: Coin Craft Canada does not exist in the 1935 directory
1936: Coin Craft Canada first appears in the 1936 Vernon's Hamilton City Directory
E. Lieberman, mgr. mfrs coin controlled equip, 26 Gore
Liebman, Eric is listed under people, saying he lives in Crystal Beach
1937 entry adds phone numbers:
COIN CRAFT CANADA
(Eric Liebman), Gordon M Noble Local Mgr;
Canadian Manufacturers and Distributors of Coin Controlled Equipment, 26 Gore, Phone Baker, 7667, After Hours Phone Regent 0632
In the 1939 entry they have moved to a new address:
Coin Craft Canada (Eric Liebman),
Canadian Manufacturers and Distributors of Coin Controlled Equipment, 441 Aberdeen av, Phone2-7667, After Hours Phone 2-9093
Because the Niagara project was so influential on electric power systems design, 25 Hz prevailed as the North American standard for low-frequency AC.
Yeah, they were still converting it to 60Hz in the 1950s. It's not unusual that I come across a conversion sticker on an older service.It was incredibly expensive as a project because the hydroelectric companies were also responsible for retrofitting any consumer equipment to make it compatible. That wasn't terribly difficult, though. Swap out one motor for another. People didn't have as many appliances in their home back then.If you run a coil (transformer, motor, solenoid) that was designed to operate on 25Hz on 60Hz, it will often appear as being "tired" - they present more than double the impedance at the higher frequency, and so less current flows. They may turn slower and be much less torquey. They won't be damaged, but they will appear to work poorly. Anything of that age that relies on inductance must be modified. Anything resistive, such as a heating element or incandescent lamp, will operate without difficulty. It's expecting an RMS voltage of approximately 115V, and that hasn't changed much in the last century. Resistive objects don't change impedance with shifting frequency, but inductive and capacitive objects do.It's interesting to note that electricity itself and what we use it for hasn't changed since we first learned to harvest it: since the beginning, we have used it to make heat, make light, make objects move, and to signal. More than a century later, we still only use electricity to make heat, make light, make objects move, and to signal. The underlying technologies have transformed as rapidly as our civilization has, but the fundamental goals of electrification haven't.
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