Soreq Nuclear Research Center in Israel, which for a short time helped the Israelis conceal the fact that they were also building the Negev Nuclear Research Center for military purposes elsewhere in the country with French assistance. Patterson encountered a prototype of an automatic bowling pin setter in the 1940s. To get the cash to develop the invention, Patterson swapped AMF stock to acquire eight small companies with fast-selling products. After incorporating key features developed by Leslie L. LeVeque, the AMF Pinspotter, was perfected and put on the market in 1952, and helped to turn bowling into the most popular US participative, competitive sport. AMF became a major manufacturer of pinsetters, bowling pins, bowling balls, and other bowling equipment, and owned and operated numerous bowling centers. AMF Bowling Products maintained its headquarters in Shelby, Ohio, until 1988. Bicycle production In 1950, after purchasing the Roadmaster line of children's and youth bicycles from the Cleveland Welding Company, American Machine and Foundry entered the bicycle manufacturing business with its newly formed AMF Wheel Goods Division. After a prolonged labor strike in 1953, AMF moved bicycle manufacturing from a UAW-organized plant in Cleveland, Ohio, to a new facility in Little Rock, Arkansas. The new plant was heavily automated and featured more than a mile of conveyor belts in six separate systems, including an electrostatic induction painting operation. Taking advantage of the increase in its target markets in the aftermath of the baby boom, AMF was able to diversify its product line, adding exercise equipment under the brand name Vitamaster in 1950. As demand for bicycles continued to expand, the company needed a new manufacturing facility to keep up with demand. In 1962, the company moved its operations to Olney, Illinois, where it built a new factory on a site that would remain the company's principal bicycle manufacturing location until the 1990s. After two decades of consistent growth, the AMF Wheel Goods Division stalled under the long-distance management of a parent company bogged down in layers of corporate management and marginally profitable product lines. Manufacturing quality as well as the technical standards of the Roadmaster bicycle line - once the pride of the company - had fallen to an all-time low. Bicycles made at the Olney plant were manufactured so poorly that some Midwestern bike shops refused to repair them, claiming that the bikes would not stay fixed no matter how much labor and