Title:
Pinball Lover Goes Full Tilt in Collecting 'Historic
Art'
Description: This is
a VOA Special English General News Report.
See text below
Text:
David Silverman loves pinball machines.
DAVID SILVERMAN: "I've been collecting pinball
machines about 30 years. Most of my life, I've been
involved somehow in pinball, whether it's thinking
about buying a game or playing games in different
places when I saw them."
People of all ages like pinball. The game awards
points the longer the ball stays in play. But be
careful! One wrong move and the ball drops, ending
the game. Today, Silverman owns the National Pinball
Museum in Washington. He says his interest started
with a game he played in Spain 30 years ago.
DAVID SILVERMAN: "And that game, fortunately or
unfortunately, started me on this collecting phase,
which was not with the intention of doing anything
but playing the game. I don't know what happened. I
just kept buying games and buying games, and it
really is a blur. It's like almost 30 years of a
blur! But today the blur has ended at about 900
games."
Silverman says he got serious about pinball 15 years
ago.
DAVID SILVERMAN: "I started seriously collecting for
the purpose of building a museum. What pinball shows
in the almost hundred years of its existence is the
development of the United States. If you take any
period of American history and, say okay the '60s,
and you follow the games that were made, the pinball
games that were made in the '60s, you would see
exactly what took place during the '60s. Besides it
being a historic timeline of events, it's an
artistic timeline. It's a cultural timeline and, of
course, it's still a game, so the game improved."
Yet pinball is more than just a look at history.
DAVID SILVERMAN: "I play pinball as an enjoyment,
and I play it as a game to get better at. So I play
it with seriousness and I play it with fun. To me, a
good portion of the excitement of a pinball machine
is what the sound is. The sound tells you what's
going on with the story. If it's just a huge jumble
of noise, then you have to be a helluva lot better
pinball player than I am because I really want to
hear what's going on. It tells me I have done
something. It tells me you missed it."
But can pinball survive in the world of electronic
games?
DAVID SILVERMAN: "The three dimensionality of
pinball, I'm not talking pinball on the computer,
I'm talking about the real pinball machine, to me
that's the hope of pinball, to get these kids seeing
what pinball is or was before so they can be
interested in continuing playing it. One of the many
points of this museum was to start a little fire
under people in terms of, not just seeing pinball as
a game to play, but as pinball -- a piece of
historic art."
Silverman estimates he has spent almost two million
dollars on pinball games over the past 30 years.
DAVID SILVERMAN: "It's obviously a passion. I'm
hoping to make [it] a passion of a lot of other
people."
David Silverman says his investment is in history
and the love of the game. I'm Barbara Klein.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
