This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past two hundred and fifty years, and now it takes form in a new way. The twenty twenty six semi quincentennial coin and medal program from the United States Mint.
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This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, and that includes your stories. Send them to ouramericanstories dot com. There are some of our favorites. Jeremy Saucier is the assistant vice president for interpretation and electronic games at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, and he's also the editor of the American Journal of Play.
Today, he gives us the exciting history of an American icon, an American original, the pinball machine. I would say pinball is an American icon. It traces its roots back to a French parlor table game called bagatelle.
Sometimes it would be in a form that looked similar to a pool table. The player would get to hit a ball, often with something that resembled a cue stick that we would use today in pool. Initially, the idea was to avoid Pins. There'd be these little wooden pins, and a lot, a lot of different versions of the game. And eventually, that evolved into where you actually had fixed pins and scoring holes.
The kind of link that you know, if you were to say, missing link between bagatelle and pinball, happens in the late 19th century with an English immigrant to America, Montague Redgrave. He patents in 1871 what he called improvements in bagatelle, and that introduced the spring. Loaded ball shooter, what today we would refer to as the plunger. The idea of also adding sound effects or sound to the game by putting bells on the playfield. The first pinball machines made this type of game into a coin-operated machine.
It took that playfield and it essentially. Monetized it right. It placed it in a a wooden case. It. Put a piece of glass over the playfield to separate the player from the game.
As you think of ramps and flippers and all those things, that's starting in the 40s and 50s. The first game that introduces the the idea of really like let's have flippers to actually control and to bat the balls around is 1947. This game, Humpty Dumpty, had six flippers and they were on each side. Of the playfield, this changes pinball. Right, it makes it much more interactive, and that becomes particularly important to the kind of public debates that are going to happen about pinball.
The best example of this in the the early nineteen forty s is in New York City. Mayor La Guardia bans pinball. Actually, does prohibition style raids to kind of root out pinball. They had been associated, and in some cases, used in gambling, in essentially money laundering. I mean, you have these bans in Los Angeles.
You have them in Ohio. They're all over the country. There's all these associations and all these anxieties. Around, what are children doing with their time? The stories about kids stealing, you know, lunch money or stealing money from their parents to go to play pinball, and it being a gateway to organized crime.
There is a pinball moral panic. But you start to see that kind of breakup in the 1970s. There's an important event that happens with the New York City Council in 1976 with a major pinball player at the time, Roger Sharp. 76, Sharp, and a number of folks who are really in support of overturning that ban go before the New York City Council, and in this sort of dramatic, you know, Babe Ruth calling his shot moment. He plays a pinball game in a way that shows the counselors that pinball is actually a game of skill.
He can tell them, "Hey, this is what I'm going to do, and I'm going to show you this is how you can play pinball and affect what's happening on the playfield." It was overturned with a vote of about thirty to six, thirty to five, thirty to six. It's probably also worth mentioning that. In the 1970s, pinball was extremely popular. New York City also saw the fact that hey, this is going to be a revenue generator, right? Because we can license and register all these machines and make money off of them.
But what's also happening is the introduction of video games. Video games were making a tremendous amount of money, particularly in the late '70s and early '80s, when there was an arcade craze, and so there was a tremendous amount of effort being made by the burgeoning video game industry to. Kind of inject respectability into the coin op industry as a whole, and so they helped to legitimize pinball. But they're also seeing that pinball is, in some ways, pushed out of the arcade. A lot of what it becomes, I think, has to do with the influence of video games.
You see video game themed pinball games going into arcades. There's a Defender pinball machine. There's a Space Invaders pinball machine. What you also Is them trying to incorporate. The form and some of the conventions of video games into pinball games.
There's a game called Hyperball that took sort of mini pinballs. You had a trigger, and you're just firing balls at these targets on the playfield. It was difficult to understand. You were spelling out words. You were also trying to stop these bolts of lightning from coming down and hitting your base, and it just didn't work.
You had that level of influence where it was really directly affecting the games, and then the other piece. I think is that you now have these development teams that are led by designers, but you've got engineers, animators. It's a completely multi-sensory experience. It's really bringing people into these immersive spaces in this really beautiful marriage of technology, of art, of storytelling, and play that really comes together, and I think kind of immerses you in what today is pinball. And a special thanks to Jeremy Saucier, who is the Assistant Vice President for Interpretation and Electronic Games, and editor of the American Journal of Play at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.
Again, the story of the pinball here on Our American Story. Lee Habib here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily. Again. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeart Radio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts.
It helps us keep these great American stories coming. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past two hundred and fifty years, and now it takes form in a new way. The twenty twenty six semi quincentennial coin and medal program from the United States Mint it celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues.
Shop new official. At usmint.gov/semiq. That's usmint.gov/semiq. Spending time outdoors? Then let's talk about skin cancer.
Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Virginia. Generon is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs.
Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get Real About Skin Cancer dot com. Power Slap 23 is live and free on YouTube on Thursday, September 17. Dana White is bringing Power Slap to Texas for the first time on the campus of Texas Tech University. Two massive title fights headline the card, including Slap Fighting Legend Wolverine. Also on the card is former WWE Champion Jay Kager and the debut of former UFC Heavyweight Chris Barnett.
You can watch Power Slap 23 for free on Power Slap's YouTube channel Thursday, September 17 for the first time from Texas. Power Slap's biggest card of the year. Weds October 7th at 9 8 Central on BET. Tyler Perry's sisters return. Things getting juicy.
What am I missing? Everything. As Danny reveals secrets kept close. Who hurt you? It was the police officer.
And Andy confronts the one who hurt her most. I know you bombed my car. I'm nowhere near being done with you. Little lies cause bigger consequences. It's just such an interesting turn.
Tyler Perry's sisters return. October seventh at nine eight central, only on BET.
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