Joe Cicak's Story
JC: "Yes, the photo is a very embryonic Black Hole. I had never built a pinball game before, and it was early in the learning process. Most of the parts were salvaged from a nearly dead Stern machine. The Birth of Black Hole...It was fall 1980. The original idea came to me while enjoying a hamburger for lunch at a local bar. A pinball repairman was working on a fairly new machine right by my table. He had propped the playfield up revealing its interior. The last pinball machine I had seen inside was stuffed full of all kinds of bells and mechanical devices. This newer machine was electronic and microprocessor controlled. It's playfield cabinet was a big empty cavern. "Hmmm," I thought, "All that empty space. What a waste." The lightbulb went off and I thought, "What if you made the playfield out of clear acrylic, then put another playfield beneath it? That could be cool. Later that night, while watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos series, I mentioned the idea to some friends. At that moment, Carl Sagan began discussing Black Holes, and the concept was married to the obvious theme and name."
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