The story
Gottlieb's main office and plant was at 1140-50 N. Kostner Avenue until the early 1970s, when a new modern plant and office were opened at 165 W. Lake Street in Northlake, IL. A subassembly plant was also built in Fargo, ND.
The company was established by David Gottlieb in 1927 with his brother Sol, and initially produced only pinball machines. In October 1932 the company moved to a factory four times the size of its previous one. It later expanded into various other games, including pitch-and-bats, bowling games, and eventually video arcade games (notably Reactor, Q*bert and M*A*C*H*3.)
Like other manufacturers, Gottlieb first made mechanical pinball machines, including the first successful coin-operated pinball machine Baffle Ball in 1931. Electromechanical machines were produced starting in 1935. During the second world war Gottlieb ceased production of pinball machines in favour of war work. The 1947 development of player-actuated, solenoid-driven 2-inch bats called "flippers" revolutionized the industry, giving players the ability to shoot the ball back up into the playfield for more points. Flippers first appeared on a Gottlieb game called Humpty Dumpty, designed by Harry Mabs. By this time, the games also became noted for their artwork by Roy Parker.
In the late 1950s, Gottlieb made more widespread use of numerical score reels, making multiple player games more practical than the traditional scoring expressed by cluttered series of lights in the back box. Score reels eventually appeared on single-player games, now known as "wedgeheads" because of their distinctive tapered back box shape. By the 1970s, artwork on Gottlieb games was almost always by Gordon Morison, and the company had begun designing their games with longer 3-inch flippers, now the industry standard.
The company made the move into solid state machines starting in the late 1970s. The first few of these were remakes of electromechanical machines such as Cleopatra (in 1977), Joker Poker and Charlie's Angels. By that time, multiple player machines were more the mode and wedgeheads were no longer being produced. The last wedgehead was T.K.O. (1979) and the last single player machine was Asteroid Annie and The Aliens (1980).
Gottlieb was bought by Columbia Pictures for $47M in 1976. By 1979 it had approximately 650 employees. Gottlieb released Q*bert in 1982, which would become immensely successful and is an icon of the golden age of arcade games. In 1983, the year after the Coca-Cola Company had acquired Columbia, Gottlieb was renamed Mylstar Electronics, but this proved to be short-lived. By 1984 the video game industry in North America was in the middle of a shakeout and Columbia closed down Mylstar at the end of September 1984. A management group, led by Gilbert G. Pollock, purchased Mylstar's pinball assets in October 1984 and continued the manufacture of pinball machines under a new company, Premier Technology. On 1985, certain assets of Gottlieb/Mylstar's video game division were sold to JVW Electronics, a Chicago-based electronics company founded by three former Gottlieb/Mylstar executives: John C. Von Lessen, William Jacobs, and Ron Waxman. As a result of this a number of prototype Mylstar arcade games, which were not purchased by the investors, were never released. Premier did go on to produce one last arcade game, 1989's Exterminator. Premier Technology, which returned to selling pinball machines under the name Gottlieb after the purchase, continued in operation until the summer of 1996. By 1992, Premier had started to create redemption and other gaming coin-op machines.
Gottlieb's most popular pinball machine was Baffle Ball (released mid-1931), and their final machine was Barb Wire (early 1996).
From Wikipedia’s article on Gottlieb, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4