March 17, 1956 – The Washington Daily News – This Day in Bowling History
The do-it-yourself craze is sweeping the nation, but in Washington area duckpinning, it’s let-the-machines-do-it. Monday, 22 slick new duck pin-spotters, manufactured by the American Machine and Foundry Co., will be put to their first test at the Clarendon Bowling Center, 1047 N. Irving-st, in Arlington.
An exhibition match between Jim Wolfenberger of Hagerstown, the new National Match Game champion, and Bill Stalcup. the D. C. area’s No. 1 ranking bowler, will feature the ceremonies starting at 6:30 p. m.
State Senator Charles R. Fenwick of Virginia and Albert Lundberg, Arlington County manager, will be present.
The machines, latest thing in automatic pin setting, will he given a four-to-flve month test at Clarendon during which time proprietors of durkpin plants throughout the East will visit and inspect them. A completely automatic unit that resets pins and returns the balls, the AMF machine is a modified version of the company’s tenpin pin-spotter. More than 10.000 tenpin models are in use thruout the United States.
The 22 machines at Clarendon represent AMF’s first crack at the duckpin field. Flaws which may occur in the machine during operation at Manager Paul James’ lanes will be corrected before mass production begins. The electronically controlled pin-spotter is operated by the bowler thru a cycle control and reset buttons located on the floor and return rack, respectively.
Should a strike or spare occur, the cycle control button is pushed and the lane cleared of dead wood and a new set of pins spotted. Dead-wood is swept into the pit by the “magic carpet”, a circular belt in the pit which carries pins and balls beneath the pin cushion into a pin-wheel. The pinwheel lifts the pins and ball to the machine’s top and releases the ball on a return rack and the pins into an oriented base, which then resets them.
While Clarendon is the nation’s first duckpin plant to use the AMF machines, automatic pinsetters were introduced to the area last month when 24 Sherman machines were installed at Bladensburg.