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Williams is a long-standing American electronic gaming and amusement company based in Chicago, Illinois. Williams was founded as the Williams Manufacturing Company in 1943 by Harry E. Williams. Williams initially was a manufacturer of pinball tables. In the early 1970s, Williams branched out into the fledgling coin-operated arcade video game market, where it was successful for many years, and the gambling machines industry, changing its name to WMS Industries, Inc. in 1974, with operating subsidiaries Midway Games and WMS Gaming. It also briefly entered into the hotel industry under the name WHG. After spinning off the hotel and video game companies in the late 1990s, its sole operating business remains WMS Gaming, a leading slot machine manufacturer, with fiscal year 2007 revenues of $540 million.^[1]

In 1943, Harry Williams founded Williams Manufacturing Company at 161 West Huron Street in Chicago, Illinois. The first five products were a fortune-telling machine called Superscope, another electro-mechanical game called Periscope, a novelty called Zingo, and two pinball conversions, Flat-Top and Laura. These pinball machines were made by purchasing older pinballs made by other companies and changing artwork and other elements on the playfield. The lack of raw materials during World War II made the manufacture of new machines difficult and expensive.

A Stanford engineering graduate, Williams devised the “tilt” mechanism for pinball machines. The first known original amusement device made by Williams was an early-era pinball machine called Suspense in 1946. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Williams continued to make pinball machines and the occasional bat-and-ball game. In 1950, Williams produced Lucky Inning, their first pinball table to have its bottom flippers facing inward in the modern manner. In late 1958, Williams Manufacturing became known as Williams Electronic Manufacturing Company. In 1960, company founder Harry Williams designed his last pinball table as a full-time designer, the horse racing-themed Nags.

In 1962, 3 Coin became the first Williams table to sell over 1,000 units (1,100, specifically). One year later, Skill Pool sold 2,250 units. In 1964 Williams was purchased by the Seeburg Corporation. The 1966 pinball table A-Go-Go, with its avant-garde 60s theme, sold a staggering 5,100 units. Early Williams pinball tables often included innovative features and pinball firsts, such as mechanical reel scoring and the "add-a-ball" feature for locations that didn't allow game replays. By 1967, Williams once again changed its name, this time to Williams Electronics, Inc.

By 1967, pinball was in the middle of its so-called "golden age", and the number of pinball units that sold began to increase dramatically. Popular Williams pinballs included Shangri-La (1967), Apollo (1967), Smart Set (1969), Gold Rush (1971), and Space Mission (1976).

In 1974, Williams Electronics, Inc. was formed to acquire the company and was sold to XCOR International in 1978. In 1980, XCOR sold Williams to Louis Nicastro, who, with his son Neil, would take the company public and run it for over two decades.

In 1973, Williams decided to enter the fledgling coin-operated arcade videogame industry. Its first arcade videogame was Paddle-Ball. Williams was moderately successful in this new arena but their big breakthrough was the release of 1980's Defender, whose space alien theme and scrolling feature made it an instant classic. Williams' other notable arcade hits were 1982's Joust and Robotron: 2084.

At the same time, Williams would enter the era of solid-state electronic pinball and come to dominate the entire pinball industry. Williams' first solid-state machine was Hot Tip (1976), which had originally been released with electromechanical reel scoring. The updated machine outsold its predecessor by nearly four to one. As the 1970s became the 1980s, Williams would release numerous innovative pinball games, such as Firepower (1980), Black Knight (1980), Space Shuttle (1984), Comet (1985), Pin*Bot (1986), F-14 Tomcat (1987), and Cyclone (1988).

By 1983, the entire arcade amusement industry went into a major decline. In spite of this, Williams managed to weather the poor economic conditions better than most. In 1985, Williams once again changed its name, this time to Williams Electronics Games, Inc. Williams became a public traded company in 1987, and the parent company's name became WMS Industries, Inc.

In 1988, WMS acquired Bally Midway Manufacturing Company, which was the result of the merger between Bally's pinball division with Midway Games in 1982. For over a decade, the company was known to the industry collectively as Williams-Bally-Midway. Williams would continue to manufacture pinball machines, while Midway would concentrate on video games (thus ending the Williams brand in video games) and pinball machines (under the Bally brand name). WMS also created a new division known as WMS Gaming to enter the gaming and state video lottery markets, developing its first video lottery terminals for the Oregon market in 1992.

In 1992, the company produced the licensed Addams Family table (based on the movie of that era). Addams Family sold a record 20,270 units, which still stands to this day. In 1993, Midway produced Twilight Zone, which sold an impressive 15,235 units as well. But the writing was on the wall. After 1993, Williams never came close to matching the sales numbers of Addams Family or Twilight Zone. In 1999, Williams made one last attempt to revitalize pinball sales with its Pinball 2000 machines that integrated pinball with computer graphics on embedded raster-scan displays. The innovation didn't pay off, and that same year, Williams left the pinball industry to focus on slot machine development.

Williams was one of the major forces in arcade amusement history. During the "Golden Age" of pinball, Williams was one of the three major manufacturers (Bally and Gottlieb being the other two). For much of the later history of pinball, Williams simply dominated the industry even as pinball began to decline in popularity. In late March of 2005,Pinball News.com reported that Williams had exclusively licensed the intellectual properties and the rights to re-manufacture former Bally/Williams games in the field of mechanical pinball (including traditional pinball and Pinball 2000 style machines) to Wayne Gillard - Mr. Pinball Australia.

As the pinball industry declined, WMS invested in the hotel industry, successfully taking public and then spinning off its hotel subsidiary, WHG, in 1996. Its video game subsidiary's fortunes rose and fell as the arcade video game business began to decline while, at the same time, the home video game industry was on the rise. By 1996, WMS had transferred all of the copyrights and trademarks in its video game library to Midway Games, including Defender, Stargate, Robotron: 2084, Joust, and Smash TV, which it took public and finally spun off in 1997.

WMS entered the reel-spinning slot machine market in 1994, but the company’s video gaming roots ultimately would prove to be its strength when, in 1996, it introduced its first hit casino slot machine, Reel ‘em In, a "multi-line, multi-coin secondary bonus" video slot machine. It followed this with a number of similar games like Jackpot Party, Boom and Filthy Rich. By 2001, it introduced its Monopoly-themed series of "participation" slots, which includes slot machines based on licensed themes such as "Clint Eastwood", "Powerball", "Green Acres" and "Dukes of Hazzard".^[1]

• WMS Gaming website
• The Pinball Factory; current licensors to the Williams/Bally pinball games