PINBALL: Evolution of the Pinball Machine | LORE XL! | Pinball Origins | TerminalMontage | LORE

Take a tour through the pinball machine’s rich past, from its origins in France to Roger Sharpe’s heroics that overturned the pinball ban!
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Written by William Lu

Animated by Jeremey Chinshue:
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Voiced by Jake ‘The Voice’ Parr:
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Transcript:

Pinball has its origins in the 1800s when the French invented what was called a “Bagatelle-Table." This was a variation of a billiard or pool table in which players use a cue stick to hit balls into pockets surrounded by pins. In 1869, inventor Montague Redgrave developed the spring launcher; this would be one of the first features of the modern pinball game.

In 1931, coin operation was added to these machines and features like sounds, bumpers, and score trackers soon followed. Finally, in 1947 player controlled flippers were added, ushering in the Golden Age of pinball machines. But these flippers were a little late to the party, as pinball already had a bad reputation that would be difficult to tilt, er shake.

Without flippers, the early pinball machines were games of chance instead of actual skill; because of this they were lumped together with slot machines and were classified as a form of gambling, which was illegal in the United States.

Adding to pinball’s shaky reputation was the fact that most of the pinball manufacturers were based out in Chicago, home of Al Capone and the hotbed for organized crime. Many lawmakers at the time were convinced that pinball had a mafia connection, and one man, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, made it his crusade to rid the machines from his city.

Initially, LaGuardia found it difficult to get public support for banning pinball machines since they didn’t have the stigma that was attached to slot machines. However, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, LaGuardia took advantage of the U.S.’ wartime “Salvage for Victory” campaign which called for citizens to donate as much scrap metal to the war effort.

On January 21, 1942 a ban on pinball machines was approved and police squads raided any public space where pinballs were to be found. The NYC raid collected around 2,000 pinball machines and in a PR display that Eliot Ness would be proud of, they smashed all of them with sledgehammers. Almost one ton of scrap metal was collected from these pinball machines.

Pinball had to go underground to shady parlors and strip clubs, but in 1976, the coin-operated amusement lobby wanted New York to reconsider the ban. They wanted to show that pinball was a game of skill and not chance. It all came down to one shot.

They brought in expert player Roger Sharpe. Sharpe claimed that pinball is a game of skill, and he would prove this by not only calling his shot, but describing a specific path the pinball would take. Sharpe’s called it exactly how he described it and just like that, the pinball ban was overturned and pretty soon, the machines were back in arcades all over the country. Have fun!

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