String pinsetters are coming to bowling alleys across America, replacing old, mechanical pinsetters — and antagonizing some bowlers. Something mysterious awaits Kevin Mills at the far end of the bowling lane, down there in the shadows.
Something is making him uneasy. Sure enough, it sounds weird when the ball hits home, more clattering than thunderous. A technical revolution is changing the game he grew up with. Bowling alleys across the country are ditching traditional pinsetters — the machines that sweep away and reset pins — in favor of contraptions that employ string.
Think of the pins as marionettes with nylon cords attached to their heads. Those that fall are lifted out of the way, as if by levitation, then lowered back into place after each frame. String pinsetters mean big savings, maybe salvation, for an industry losing customers to video games and other newfangled entertainment.
That is why the U. Bowling Congress recently certified them for tournaments and league play. But there is delicate science at play here. Radius of gyration, coefficient of restitution and other obscure forces cause tethered pins to fly around differently than their free-fall counterparts. Mills seems dubious on a recent night when he visits a San Fernando Valley bowling alley that has made the switch. These actual humans — mostly teenagers — did the sweaty work of scrambling around behind the lanes, gathering and resetting by hand.
Old black-and-white photographs show them dressed in suspenders and snap-brim hats. After World War II, machines took over. Even as automated pinsetters evolved over the years, they remained Rube Goldberg devices, made of gears, levers and spinning mechanisms that needed lots of electricity, full-time mechanics and expensive replacement parts. None of this mattered during flush times.
