Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
Who invented the pinball machine?
SHORT ANSWER Pioneering pinball wizard Montague Redgrave used an older game as inspiration
LONG ANSWER A drug store and tavern favourite in 1930s America, and a banned symbol of rebellion from the 1940s (more on that later), the coin-operated arcade game seems a quintessential relic of the 20th century. Yet the pinball pioneer worked his magic a few decades earlier. In 1871, US-based British inventor Montague Redgrave took out a patent for his game, “Improvement in Bagatelle Game”, which was an 18th-century French pastime reminiscent of pool or billiards.
Redgrave’s smaller game had a coiled spring and plunger, an inclined playing surface, and marbles. Sounds a lot like pinball. Still, the pinball phenomenon had to wait until the 1930s when competing versions – Baffle Ball, created by David Gottlieb, and Bally Hoo, by Raymond Maloney – hit the market and appealed as cheap entertainment in Depression-hit US.
Pinball kept developing, but by the time the game-changing flipper was added in 1947, the machines had been banned in major cities. They were seen as promoting gambling – as prizes or extra turns could be won – and perhaps even a front for the mafia. New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia even ordered publicity raids where machines were smashed with sledgehammers and dumped in rivers. The pinball prohibition lasted until the 1970s, by which time it had become a symbol
