Pinball machine

Pinball is a type of coin-operated arcade game where a player attempts to score points by manipulating one or more metal balls on a playfield inside a glass covered case called a pinball machine. The primary objective of the game is to score as many points as possible. more...

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Secondary objectives are to maximize the time spent playing (by earning extra balls and keeping balls in play as long as possible) and to earn free games (known as replays).

History of pinball

Evolution from outdoor games

The origins of pinball are intertwined with the history of many other games. Games played outdoors by rolling balls or stones on a grass course, such as Bocce or Bowls, eventually evolved into games played by hitting the balls with sticks and propelling them at targets. Croquet and Shuffleboard are examples of these games.

These games led to indoor versions that could be played on a table, such as Billiards or Carrom, or on the floor of a pub like Bowling. The tabletop versions of these games became the ancestor of the modern pinball machine.

Bagatelle

The existence of table-based games dates back to the 15th Century. While some games took the wickets and balls of Croquet and turned them into the pockets of modern billiards, some tables became smaller and had the holes placed in strategic areas in the middle of the table.

In France, during the reign of King Louis XIV, someone took a billiard table and narrowed it, placing pins at one end of the table while making the player shoot balls with a stick or cue from the other end. Pins took too long to reset when knocked down, so the pins eventually were fixed to the table and holes took the place of targets. Players could ricochet the ball off the pins to achieve the harder scoring holes. In 1777, a party was thrown in honor of the King and his wife at the Chateau D'Bagatelle, owned by the brother of the king. The highlight of the party was a new table game featuring the slender table and cue sticks, which players used to shoot ivory balls up an inclined playfield. The table game was dubbed Bagatelle by the King's brother and shortly after swept through France. Some French soldiers carried their favorite bagatelle tables with them to America while helping to fight the British in the American Revolutionary War. Bagatelle spread and became so popular in America as well that a political cartoon from 1863 even depicts President Abraham Lincoln playing a tabletop bagatelle game.

The birth of pinball

In 1869, a British inventor named Montague Redgrave settled in America and manufactured bagatelle tables out of his factory in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1871 Redgrave was granted US Patent #115,357 for his "Improvements in Bagatelle" , which replaced the cue at the player's end of the table with a coiled spring and a plunger. The player shot balls up the inclined playfield using this plunger, a device that remains in pinball to this day. This innovation made the game friendlier to players. The game also shrunk in size and began to fit on top of a bar or counter. The balls became marbles and the wickets became small "pins". Redgrave's innovations in game design are acknowledged as the birth of pinball in its modern form.

Read more at Wikipedia.org