Koziarz has been programming since fourth grade when he was part of a Glenview grade school experiment in which students were turned loose on Apple IIs. It was in high school that Koziarz learned Pascal and C, and when college time rolled around, he knew he wanted to study computer science. Because of the public attention focused on NCSA and the Beckman Institute at Illinois, and tempted by the possibility of working on a Cray, Koziarz chose to come to the University of Illinois. He never did get to work on a supercomputer, but instead, he entered the happening world of the Illini Union basement and the games therein. In fact, Bally has used the Union basement as a test site for some of its new designs.
College students are the ideal pinball customer.
He went on to describe his educational experience as straightforward. He concentrated on operating systems, and his goal directed sequence was in human factors in psychology. When Koziarz graduated, still not really thinking of making pinball his livelihood, he went to work for Abbott Labs in the Chicago area where he did software validation in the transfusion diagnostics division. He spent three years there during which he began to collect and restore old pinball machines, lugging 300-lb boxes up the stairs and stuffing them into his apartment. Koziarz began to meet other kindred souls, through collectors groups and through the Usenet group rec.games.pinball .