November 2009 – April 2010
Pinball, that twentieth-century icon of amusement found in barrooms and arcades across the United States, was inspired by the oldest known pastime—aiming balls toward targets. Ancient Egyptian and Roman games that involved rolling balls on outdoor courts were adapted for indoor play by fifteenth-century Europeans. In 1870, an enterprising English immigrant in Cincinnati, Ohio, named Montague Redgrave miniaturized Bagatelle, a popular French table game similar to billiards for the countertop. Redgrave replaced the traditional cue with a spring-loaded plunger to shoot marbles across a board studded with pins and created the first recognizable pinball game.
The game remained relatively unchanged until the early 1930s, when several innovations to Redgrave's invention—coin-slide mechanisms, ball-return devices, and glass playfield covers—led to its popular use for amusement and gambling during the Great Depression. In the mid-1930s, electrification allowed more advancements—electromagnetic bumpers and kick-out holes replaced score holes, tilt devices automatically shut down abused games, and illuminated backboxes recorded players' scores. The introduction of player-controlled "flipper bumpers" in 1947 changed pinball from a game of chance to one of skill.
Bally, Gottlieb, and Williams, manufacturing companies founded by pinball pioneers during the game's early years of development, emerged as industry leaders during the 1950s. Admonitions against gambling or awarding prizes appeared on the machines' playfields, and the companies successfully marketed multi-player machines as wholesome games designed for competition in an attempt to rescue pinball from its reputation as a source of juvenile delinquency.
Pinball's play became faster and more interactive in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the addition of three-inch flippers that fired the ball with increased speed at new features such as drop targets and spinners. The game's pop-cultural zenith in the modern era occurred with the theatrical release of The Who's rock-opera Tommy in 1975 that featured a climactic pinball tournament battle between lead singer Roger Daltrey as the title character and Elton John as the Pinball Wizard.
In the 1980s, pinball machines became increasingly sophisticated. Feature-filled playfields and complex scoring rules prevailed in popular games such as Funhouse, The Addams Family, and Twilight Zone. Nevertheless, video games and other amusements surpassed pinball's popularity and its main producers were out of the pinball business by the end of the 1990s.
Today, the last remaining manufacturer, Stern Pinball, Incorporated, is reducing its workforce. There exists the very real possibility that the industry will end altogether. Pinball's demise as a business model, however, does not reflect the game's pervasive appeal and increasing popularity in recent years. An extensive network of pinball enthusiasts communicates online and at demonstrations, tournaments, and exhibitions held throughout the United States. Large expositions take place annually in both Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area where collectors secure parts for their beloved machines and attend symposiums led by game designers, backglass artists, and industry scholars. Most significantly, attendees come to play—to walk up to these noisy, colorful, illuminated machines that attract with the same allure that countertop marble games possessed more than one hundred years ago. In a world of sophisticated hand-held game devices and home systems, pinball endures.
All objects are from The Silver Ball Ranch, Collection of Richard and Val Conger, Sebastopol, California, and from the collections of the Pacific Pinball Museum, Alameda, California.
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Photography is not permitted.
©2009 by San Francisco Airport Commission.
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