OPERATIONS persuaded Kinzer that he was the only one bothered by their ungainly appearance. Chandler brought another TI engineer, Bobby Beene, on board to begin seriously developing the bumpers. Every three or four days there would be another version to try out on Kinzer’s lanes. At first, the bumpers worked on ball bearings – 2,000 per lane; at the end, they were articulated by simple brackets. In the beginning, weatherstripping for the rebound surface; later, extruded nylon. Chandler and Beene eventually filed for a patent for “A bowling alley bumper system in which an elongated bumper is mounted alongside and parallel to each alley gutter, and in which there are provided movable supports that permit the extension of the bumpers to guard the gutters when guarding is desired and retraction of the bumpers to expose the gutters when normal alley operation is desired.” Patent 4,900,024 was issued Feb. 13, 1990. Wortman’s patent covered anything that goes in the gutter; Chandler and Beene’s applied to anything positioned above the gutter. “They had ground level down to Hell and we had ground level all the way up to Heaven,” Kinzer says.
Still he was not thinking about going into serious business with bumpers when Chandler and Beene suggested he approach AMF president Phil Nisely, with whom Kinzer was on friendly terms. The three went out to see him. Kinzer says AMF immediately wanted the device for its AMF-branded centers and wanted to sell them across the industry as well. They did not want to invest in R&D on the gadget and they did not want to manufacture it; they wanted the three pitchmen to do that.
“Of course, Bobby is sitting there saying, ‘We can do it, we can do it.’ And I don’t have a clue how.” The next day he met Dennis Lord, a brother-in-law of Beene’s, and found out how. Lord owned a manufacturing company. “He could manufacture anything.” And Rotex, Lord’s Irving, TX (Dallas) company, did. When the Glancer faded from the market, Rotex was manufacturing 100% of bumpers for bowling, according to Kinzer. In the mid-’90s AMF bought Chandler and Beene’s patent. Two years ago QubicaAMF exported bumper manufacturing to China.
Bumpers were “the next big thing” when they came along in the ’80s, but Wortman was not the first to patent a device for the purpose. That honor may go to Robert M. Conklin, Robert Torresen and Anthony J. Gretzky who patented an articulated gutter for a game of their devising they called carom bowling. In their design, the gutter could be rotated electrically so that one side of it protruded above the lane, creating a rebound surface for the ball. Brunswick bought the patent, 3,401,933, which was granted Sept. 17, 1968. Why did it take another 20 years or so before bumpers caught on? Kinzer believes the market focus was wrong. “Nobody ever thought about the kids,” he answers. “Carom bowling was Saturday night, colored pins, the strike will pay two dollars instead of one, and you can bounce it two times and get a strike. Everything was made for the adults. Nobody ever made anything for the youth market.” Kinzer isn’t striking a holier-thanthou pose, though. “If it hadn’t been for my kid, I’d a never done anything with it.” ❖ Our thanks to Gordon Murrey of GKM International for background for this story.
16
IBI
February 2011