Louis Wickes Hines: Photograph Of Boys Working In Arcade Bowling Alley

A patron at a modern bowling alley, where a mechanical device called a pinsetter or pinspotter sets the pins back into their original positions, returns bowling balls to the front of the alley, and clears fallen pins, might need to be reminded that these devices perform tasks that in a former era were performed manually by “pinboys.” Gottfried Schmidt was awarded a patent for the first mechanical pinsetter in 1940; he sold the patent to American Machine and Foundry (AMF) in 1941, and AMF “pinspotters” were first marketed in 1952. Until then, boys were hired to sit on a ledge behind the pins. After a bowler had bowled the first of two balls, the boy would jump down, reset the pins (if the bowler bowled a strike), sweep those that had been knocked down off the lane, and return the ball to the bowler by pushing it down the return track. Sometimes bowlers attempted to bribe pinboys to fake a perfect game for them by knocking down standing pins with something like a coat hanger.