page_title: Pacific Pinball Museum
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Pacific Pinball Museum / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The visible pinball machine. In the collection of the Pacific Pinball Museum.
context_page_description: The Pacific Pinball Museum is an interactive museum/arcade offering a chronological and historical selection of rare bagatelles and early games, to over 90 playable pinball machines from the 1940s to present day.
  Throughout the museum are hand-painted murals, Jukeboxes and rotating exhibits. There are rooms for parties, events, field-trips and STEAM educational programs as well.
context_section_description: The museum was founded in 2004 by Michael Schiess, a former museum exhibition designer. Schiess started collecting pinball machines in 2001. He decided to open his own museum after being unimpressed with the coverage of pinball history at other museums. One of his first major acquisitions was thirty-six machines in one purchase. Fourteen of them were installed in a rented room, which Schiess called Lucky Ju Ju, in Alameda and a jar was placed out for donations. In 2004 the facility expanded and became a nonprofit, renaming itself the Pacific Pinball Museum. The museum expanded in 2009 displaying forty woodrail and wedge head machines from the collection of Larry Zartarian. The museum has a gift shop that sells pinball themed merchandise. It also has a museum board, and two additional staff members besides Schiess.
caption: The visible pinball machine, co-created by museum owner Michael Schiess based on the pinball machine Surf Champ by Gottlieb from 1976
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