These Machines will Con You | Nostalgia Nerd

something I bloody love pinball it almost feels like a god-given right to play these ball-tastic machines of flippering joy and the modern digital machines like this one give you the ability to choose from a plethora of tables of a touch of a button it's truly magnificent but I think it was almost all stopped just like when they renamed the marathon to stickers and the entire United Kingdom imploded yes for Life a pinball was almost cut short mainly due to an overzealous mayor some questionable mechanics and a CV underbelly which is still kind of with us today Banning things that are fun is not exactly unusual in the history of humanity in fact if it's really fun you can guarantee it's been banned somewhere in the world how about video games yes a fair few have been banned in various places in the past and still are today in Venezuela you can't get hold of video games that involve the shooting of human targets not legally anyway Brazil Bill still cracks down on violent video games like the Mortal Kombat series for example and North Korea doesn't allow the usual citizens to play any games that weren't made in North Korea although to be fair that's sort of a given but surely the precursor to the video game The Humble pinball machine is immune to the sort of things that can get a video game banned stuff like murder sexuality and political statements I mean it's a metal ball being flung around a wooden box for goodness sake [Music] as is often sadly the case even in countries we consider not to be so conservative something as innocuous as pinball has in the past been struck with the massive Hammer of velor and not even for things like racy cabinet art specifically pinball machines were banned in a country where guns weren't and still aren't by the way while pinball machines aren't banned anymore in America kinder eggs are mind you although in the UK guns are massively regulated up until 2012 there was in ancient law on the book so to speak but it was okay to bump off a Scotsman in York City Center as long as he's carrying a bow and arrows there's a similar rule supposedly applied in Chester but only if a victim is Welsh although Chester authorities insist this is an urban legend in any case while York's law might have made any Scottish archery Enthusiast a bit nervous to pass the bar walls any risk of death is covered by the more recent law of you know not murdering people even if they are Scottish anyway that's enough Meandering the law that banned pinball machines in America was not archaic and did not involve crossbows it was all about so-called morality pinball machines have their roots in the games bowling and a broader term of ground Billiards which covers a whole bunch of ground-based games where in a ball was hit by a hammer of a mallet it was taking the games indoors that would start things moving towards pinball sometimes pubs would have a scaled down indoor version of these games with wooden pins for the hit ball to avoid penalties were given for knocking the wooden pins down during the 1600s in France specifically the billiard's tables were very popular eventually to stop the need for resetting the pins they began to be secured to the board and holes in the board became for goals according to the Encyclopedia of play in today's society edited by Rodney P Carlisle Louis XVI was a big fan of indoor Billiards and when he got a brand new table with Swanky cue sticks and Ivory balls to shoot up a sloped playing area it was a huge hit such a hit that when the king's brother called it Bagatelle from a similar Italian word meaning a decorative But ultimately an important item the design and name kicked off in France a version of Bagatelle using thin metal pins rather than wooden pins for the tabletop game emerged in the 1700s in Europe despite it being of European design it was known as billiard Japanese meaning Japanese Billiards interestingly this would also directly evolve into the Japanese game Pachinko a game in which a metal ball is dropped down a vertical Playfield for points by the way the reason something called Japanese Billiards is usually referred in sources as a bag of tail game rather than a billiard game is that on the whole bakatel boards are expected to have this curved top on the Playfield rather than an entirely rectangular play area this billiard Japanese game is the first example we have of a tabletop bag of tail type game but does not have the player use a hammer or a cue to hit the ball rather in this example there is a spring-loaded cube built in one could argue this manner of playing wouldn't be standardized for Bagatelle games until a good hundred years later when one man decided to claim that spring Q for himself now to the late 1800s and a U.S patent of the spring launch mechanism was netted by one Montague Redgrave a British man living in Cincinnati Ohio he submitted a patent application for improvements of the established Bagatelle game claiming his specific design including the pin Arrangement board incline the piston and edition of swinging Gates he mentioned many times in the application this was to create a game of more skill and challenge the painting was grounded in 1871 and tabletop bag of Tails started popping up in watering holes in America and parts of Europe two decades later and over in Pennsylvania this time one billiard Hall owner charles young applied for a paintings of his own in 1893 his application of a coin and slot machine that used balls and pins was granted this machine type would about the insertion of coins to play the game promising a nice little earner for pub and club Owners and the addition of a pay-to-play mechanic meant that they would come under the scrutiny of those who saw people spending their money on something that they enjoy as Bad News Bears to be fair we have to remember that while the coin slot simply allowed people to pay a little cash in exchange for the luxury of playing the bag of Tails and later pinballs as they of course soon became known retrospectively there's not a chance that punters didn't sometimes bet wages with each other or have prized based tournaments it's reasonable to assume that bagatelle's were used indirectly for gambling but that's just an assumption I wouldn't know because in the early 1900s I wasn't there gambling which had been popular in the states for centuries just like anywhere really was part of a CD underbelly of crime in many states by the very early 1900s while affluent gamblers would enjoy the safety of private clubs horror workers didn't have so much protection when flinging dice desperate to cash in and win an easier life or maybe literally just get the money to buy family dinner it wasn't unusual for a worker to smash his earnings on a rigged game and dodgy off-track horse betting poor areas became perfect places for low morale High earners to set up gambling dens protected by the politicians of the area by sneaking them a bit of cash on the sly under the guise of a licensing fee sounds familiar here's a full page of various Christian reverends having a pop about the problem of gambling in Chicago in 1894 in the Chicago Tribune all the reverends writing in seemed to take the most issue with it being something God wouldn't be wild about by virtue of money being the root of all evil rather than being upset about the poor being taken advantage of although Reverend Bishop Fallows here does lament that gambling can make a man's heart as hard as the nether Milestone Reverend Carlos Martin here doesn't hold back at all gambling produces evil results for one thing it overstimulates the nervous system and legitimately ends in palsy and Insanity victims of this Vice Scorch their nature as with Hellfire other stimulant seemed tame after the fierce excitement of this game of devils those dog-colored boys did not have any chill absolutely seething with America being quite a religious place though seething pastors certainly had their voices heard as in 1910 just about all gambling became illegal in the United States of America it's worth noting that the infamous alcohol ban written in the 18th Amendment wouldn't come into law until a whole 10 years later in 1919 and with our pin and board games now coin operated the question could be asked are these games technically gambling even before the coin operation was added there were already strict rules around the use of bagatelle's in parts of America anyway here's an ordinance from back in 1875 from the Jackson County Banner creating that anyone allowing children to play Bagatelle or Billiards or any other game will get a fine for each game played it also threatened fines for the games being kept in the same place where children might congregate more than 25 years later Herald of Phillips County published a similar ordinance there's plenty more ordinances of the same published in newspapers across the USA leading right up to when the first pinball machine as we know them today would be made exactly what can be considered the first pinball machine though is a tough one pinball meaning this particular manner of game first showed up around the 1930s presumably because the games all use pins and balls but when researching I was able to find mentions in American newspapers as early as 1898 with this wanted listing for a jukebox or a pinball machine pinball written with two separate words according to the online Etymology dictionary pinball is a word from 1907 referring specifically to a game where the goal is to knock down a pin or pins and earlier it meant a pin cushion the first pinball machine seems to be considered one amusingly called wiffle this was released by automatic Industries Inc in 1931 but again it's not hugely different to games seen previously it has the spring leather or lever the coin slot pin and scoring but it was incredibly popular delightfully the game was created because the Ohio inventor Arthur Palin found an old Bagatelle board in his garage and decided to make it a Christmas present for his little girl Lois the Cheapskate it became so popular with her friends but he realized he might have a business success on his hands and that he did after founding automatic Industries with two of his friends with Trio could barely make the boards quick enough but it wasn't until the addition of electricity in these pinballed games where the games would start to closely resemble the pinball machines we know and love today one W van Sosa made a scoring device whilst working for the patient novelty Manufacturing Company in New York to be used in the bowling tabletop game called bolo this used pins but served as bumpers and when hit would light up their corresponding bowling pins on the back box impressed by this and the popularity of such a game mechanic pin board manufacturer Bally took the idea and made it into bumpers the result was this game called bumper released in 1936 which was a board consisting entirely of bumpers that would keep score up on the back box pinball manufacturers were probably aware that they were on borrowed time after gambling had become illegal I should clarify slot machines were very much in the gambling category and slot machines are what had reportedly grown a criminal Enterprise around them in New York especially with Mobsters fiddling with the odds they were practically stealing from the common man just trying to get the gambling fix when it came to the aptly named one-armed Bandits by this point the 1930s pinball manufacturers would consistently plaster for entertainment only or not gambling on their flyers or their machine's coin slots and that seemed to be enough to keep them out of trouble but in New York one mayor hopeful was about to turn all that on its head fiorello LaGuardia was quite vocal of his distrust of the manipulation of the slot machine and gambling industry by mobsters and by extension pinball machines and pledged to tackle it as all part of his campaign against racketeering and that's where we'll later find out once he was eventually elected he absolutely did not muck about on that front but why was he clubbing in pinball with those sneaky slot machines the likes of which were part of money grabbing schemes by notorious mob boss Frank Costello among others did the humble Bagatelle based game really have a place in the criminal underworld even if people did have to put a couple of coins in for the joy of playing the proof was in the payout payouts on pinball machines wasn't a new thing but they weren't payout in the traditional sense to get around the gambling ban manufacturers of paying out tables would have to do things like make every fifth coin put in the machine go towards a jackpot which such games tended to call profit sharing like on this Stevo ball game made by AJ Stevens and Company in 1932. well in 1933 the year before LaGuardia was elected Valley developed an actual payout slot for their pinboard games one that would dispense an amount of cash according to where the ball landed the first official one was Rock pocket but more would follow and not just from Bali there had been payout Machines of a type made before including one which would decant gum or tokens but once Bali started up with these cash-centric versions things were about to get real pinball machines like Bally's improved rocket gave punters the possibility of getting six payouts on just one coin these machines proved hugely successful for Bali even though they were arguably gambling machines at this point here is an advert listing by Bali in a Memphis Tennessee Commercial paper Bally does call those rocket machines automatic pinball games payout zombies pinball machines unlike as expected on slot machines would not always be cold Hard Cash they might be tokens which were expected to be exchanged with the proprietor for cash which was a roundabout way of evading the gambling ban while also being utterly blatantly gambling the law Keen to crack down on the gambling problem had parts of America seeing their slot machines being seized and either pushed into a private club or bands outright and after that scrutiny was turned onto pinball games for example this front page article in the June 1934 edition of the Spokane Chronicle Washington with slot machines practically driven out of Spokane prosecuted Charles W Greeno today started investigating pinball games in my judgment where prizes are given these machines are gambling machines Proprietors still needed a license to have pinball machines but they weren't allowed slot machines at all by 1936 the conversation around whether pinball machines were games of skill and therefore not gambling was especially loud here in the Brooklyn daily Eagle in January 1936 Oliver R pilat explains in detail the nature of the boards how pleasing their electronic lights are the players and how the Supreme Court Justice is in the process of deciding whether to revoke the licenses for them he also talks about a pinball racket pinball games were supposedly frequently used to fleece players out of money and the same page reports on the grisly nature how a 28 year old businessman had been shot to death in his car while transporting two pinball machines I fear for that anytime I move around retro Goods to be fair this was also around when New York's mayor went absolutely nuclear on both slot machines in his beloved City yes fiorello LaGuardia was indeed elected as New York's mayor in 1934 and the lad as I mentioned did not muck about when it came to the criminal Enterprise around a league of slot machines specifically not only did he ban them outright but in a bizarre but none less effective bit of PR work had himself filmed utterly smashing the crap out of piles of them with a massive Hammer he also had himself filmed utterly lobbing the machines into the sea yes a government official fly-tipped absolute Mentalist not pinball machines yet but their days were numbered in 1939 the not insignificant issue of World War II cropped up knocking civilians that had barely caught their breath from the last one for six in a war-torn world you'd hope that those who weren't sent to a war zone might at least be able to take their mind off things with a game of chance or two because let's face it anyone not Center the front was missing out on the biggest highest Stakes game of chance there is well no because it was about to all kick off in 1941 a federal level tax was implemented on various gaming devices which included pinball machines owners of the machines needed to be registered with the government and pay a 50 tax on every one of the machines they owned that being said the machines themselves were still able to bring in a lot of money for the owners according to a report by the New York Commissioner of Investigation 1941 the annual takeaway of all the machines with more than 20 million dollars and remember that in the early 40s adjusted for inflation that's around 405 million dollars finally in 1942 LaGuardia made good on his campaign promises and got pinball machines even ones that didn't pay out banned in New York by virtue of being gambling devices you yes to repeat even the ones that didn't pay out LaGuardia gave an order to the New York Police Headquarters to raid for any and or pinball machines just to make sure pinball players were duly devastated here's an opinion piece in the El Paso Herald in January 1942 by H Allen Smith Smith laments that he hasn't noticed other pinball fans complaining about the demonization of pinball comparing it to Golfers lying down silently if the authorities banned the game if they're going to holler about gambling why don't they confiscate playing cards why don't they confiscate the Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Gardens if they're looking for devices which might impel people to make bets why don't they just go out and confiscate the Board of Elections fierce but in New York the mayor was so Keen to get those evil pinball machines out of the Gaze of impressionable youths by making a point of pestering the police to get a move on with those pinball raids Maya LaGuardia was quoted as saying these machines developed the Instinct of gambling in the young and teach them to try to get something for nothing according to the New York Times published on the 25th of January 1942 after the ban was announced LaGuardia personally went to the police commissioner and asked for every police officer who wasn't busy was to be sent to raid locations suspected of keeping pinball machines laguardia's reasoning for a personal push was he was certain that the financial backers of the games were planning a pushback and as it turned out he wasn't Wrong by 6 PM the police had snagged nearly 3 000 machines and served a grand total of 1524 summonses yes any establishment known to be carrying pinballs were about to have their devious doors absolutely smashed open by overzealous coppers ready to cart away the offending item probably while the owners angrily flapped a licensing fee documents in their face I couldn't find out if the owners were reimbursed for their NAB machines or their licensing fee to own them but I'm willing to bet they were not and since the first time it went so well Maya LaGuardia picked up his massive sledgehammer and again had himself photographed mashing captured pinball machines to Absolute bits I think he enjoyed doing that a bit too much and obviously it wasn't just the arcade and amusement owners getting utterly shafted that were upset with this turn of events the manufacturers and investors of pinball machines weren't best pleased either and their attorneys for the gaming operators did quickly start looking for a judge who could issue a federal injunction a court order that would stop laguardia's attack on gaming in its tracks LaGuardia openly mocked the attempt taking frankly Savage pot shots at the panicking manufacturers the main Distributors and wholesale manufacturers are slimy Crews of tin horns well-dressed and living in luxury on Penny thievery wow Rude by the way if you're like me you're British and wondering what any other bobbins a tin horn is it's a somewhat archaic American slur for someone who pretends to have money or influence that they don't have used specifically against gamblers the word supposedly came from a practice among poorer gamblers who used a tin cone to play a popular game called chuck-a-luck rather than a level one which was more expensive Chuck a luck is a game where you literally bet on what dice combinations will show after their role so it's interesting that even in a game where you may as well lob your weeks earning in the lake there was a sort of snobbishness attached to what you flung your diet about in unfortunately the attempt to overturn laguardia's ban didn't work perhaps due to the fact that there were more important things going on such as an entire world war priorities now of course a modern pinball player might scoff at the idea of pinball games being absolutely banned as part of a morality come anti-criminal drive I I appreciate that's probably why a lot of you clicked on this video but there really was a negative feeling around pinball games and not just because many people would consider them synonymous with slot machines at the time in the National Banner in 1942 an article about laguardia's war against pinball describes a test run by two New York police department members before they went out to smash up apparently two electrical engineers tested an unknown machine to see what a skillful player's chances would be of winning they reported that by merely pulling a wire the payoff figure would be changed if the operator decided that the number was being hit too regularly this was what proved it as a gambling machine and thus illegal on the 22nd of March 1942 the Philadelphia Inquirer published these pictures of the switches inside pinball machines that allowed owners to switch them from free play to pay to play and other electrics that would apparently count the wins and make it easier for gamers to lose to be fair that doesn't look too good does it maybe Banning The Humble pinball game in a country where gambling was a racket won by criminals isn't such a Daft idea pinball machines ended up being banned entirely in many of America's biggest cities such as Chicago and New Orleans while other cities cracked down on children playing them there were also certain rules about how far an establishment had to be from school to own them member cities upholding the ban pinball machines that survived the mass culling had to be slipped into seedy places like pawn shops or underground clubs the metal embassies machines once providing entertainment would find a second life as bullet and ammunition in the war we expect ing million pounds of old aluminum utensils throughout the country ten thousand pounds are needed for every fighter plane it's odd to think but parts of cutesy pinball machines like got Libs flying trapeze or Bally's Sea Biscuit would end up lodged in the skull of some poor bastard on a battlefield pinball games enjoyed a bit of a Resurgence after World War II not in New York minds they had to make do with just getting absolutely sloshed instead which I'm sure was much better in 1947 the first pinball game that looked exactly as us today would expect the pinball cabinet to look finally showed up when electric mechanical flippers were added to the board got lib released a Humpty Dumpty board which used player-controlled flippers to add a real element of skill to the game Humpty Dumpty used electromechanical flippers although prior to this there were instances of flipper light controls used in pinball most notably in the 1932 game double Shuffle although that used entirely manual big flippers which the player would manipulate four at a time to get a ball to the top of the board Humpty Dumpty with its novel new way of playing would be a good success for Creator Gottlieb and it wasn't long before competing pinball creators like Williams and Bali would start creating their own versions while not exactly easy to beat those flippers made this more of a game of skill than chance but that wasn't going to affect New York's pinball ban Apparently after the 1945 pinball Crackdown the police didn't let up any time soon years later in March 1949 here's the New York Police Commissioner William P O Breen taking a leaf out of laguardia's book and smashing the seized pinball machines up with a massive Hammer absolute lad this was a couple of years after World War II ended so this machine probably didn't get made into bullets and the bombers I'm betting it ended up lobbed in the sea again to be honest of course if anyone smashed this machine up I'd be livid but then is more likely to get a virus than anything else nice segue so thank you to sponsor total AV antivirus an award-winning product designed to protect PCS Macs or smartphones from nasty malware spyware and other viruses it's designed to encrypt your data as well as including a free VPN to protect you from phishing sites and other harmful things that try and steal your data it runs seamlessly in the background on all devices meaning that I can get on with my day knowing that my laptop desktop and smartphones are 100 protected so rather than smashing your computer to pieces with a literal huge stonking a hammer maybe save a frustration by keeping your devices protected with this great offer visit www.totalav.com nerd70 or click the link in the description to get 70 off total AV today pinball machine still went legal in New York City until 1976 when one pinball player was able to prove to the city council that pinball machines now with their flippers and bumpers were games of skill rather than luck obviously Keynes get the masses back flicking metal balls over wooden boards writer and Pinball Wizard Roger sharp insisted that the days of unfairly rigged pinball was over being an expert pinball player he was a vocal dissenter of New York's pinball ban the scent that got the attention of the music and amusement Association and as a pinball expert the MAA decided sharp would be the perfect person to defend this vilified game in court a group of government officials only one of them publicly opened to the unbanning of pinball machines watched as sharp took control of gotlib's recently released aboard bank shot to support his case after a rocky start he proceeded to repeatedly beat the Machine by very careful and frankly very skilled gameplay impressed the committee agreed to lift the ban it's worth noting that there had also been police surveys according to of a Newsday paper in June 1976 which probably helped the whole unbanning thing along the survey showed none of the Shady underworld connections the pinball and slot machines that had led Maya LaGuardia to love the things in the sea more than 30 years earlier this survey is what Ben Mayer Abraham beam cited as his reason for citing a law allowing establishments licensed to house games of skill to finally add pinball games to their roster but law also allowed places like movie theaters and restaurants to get in on the action if willing to pay a license fee with that being said there's no doubt sharp was instrumental in bringing the game back to New York and being at least partly responsible for the Resurgence for game endured across the state in the following years in 2022 his fascinating story was made into an award-winning film called pinball the man who saved the game in some parts of America the Old Law still does remain on the books but just isn't enforced just like those crossbow laws for example in Oakland California here it was still technically illegal to play Pinball until the Old Law expired in 2014 but no one had paid that any attention for decades because come on it's pinball of course in places where pinball was formally banned there are still strict rules around gambling and payout machines but you'd be hard-pressed to find the pinball machine these days that does offer a payout although ones like Bally's safe cracker do allow tokens to be dispensed presumably so that about 500 of them can be collected by the player to exchange for the world's shittest knocked off cuddly Minion toy so to sum up the ban on pinball in many parts of America wasn't just marvel Panic LaGuardia had very good reason to lump him in with gambling machines especially before flippers were added and yes they were equipped to make punters think they could make a bit of cash while actually rinsing them for their change with that being said the machines with promises of payout were the main problem not the ones meant for the fun of the game also it seems a bit out of order to just lob stuff in the sea when you disagree with it else most of the UK government would have just been launched off Brighton Pier by now it's easy to look back on our ancestors Shenanigans as moral panic when looking through the eyeglass of a modern world but to Mayor LaGuardia I say fair Playmate now who's for a game of pinball so there we go what a story I'm going to finish playing this magnificent machine because pinball is flipping great and that's a pun I'm happy with so until next time I've been nostalgenered toodaloo [Music] [Applause] [Music] as long as we could be without a hood [Music] of your dedication [Music]

Channel: Nostalgia Nerd

Views: 81,673

Keywords: pinball, pinball ban, pinball machine, slot machines

Id: 0mGcghjJm0M

Length: 29min 10sec (1750 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 25 2023