bagatelle notes: Trou Madam, Mississippi, Pigeon Hole

Games like Pigeon Hole come up a lot when researching old bagatelle boards.  It was easy to lay a wooden set of gates across an existing playfield to create a new game experience.  But I quickly realize that "Pigeon Hole" was just one in a long line of games that used arches at the end of a table.

The idea of shooting a ball through gates on the table is one of the earliest innovations, appearing relatively shortly after billiards evolved from a lawn game into an indoor table game.  These games are all billiards variants.  Actually, I'm not sure.  We have references to trou madam being played in the 16th century just on a regular table, so who knows.  There were many lawn games where you had to pitch a ball through a gate, so probably the real innovation of trou madam is codifying the set of arches.

It was these arches, which came up from lawn games similar to croquet and now sit on a table, that I might have to consider the true birthplace of pinball.  It is the arches that carried forward through the centuries and would lead to the innovations that gave us pinball. (with a few innovations from co-evolving table game cousins being absorbed back in, of course.)  Pinball is the result of an evolution beginning with aristocratic table games, and the trou madam arches are one of the earliest innovations in table games we can trace.  

I see a few epochs in regards to pinball ancestry:

1. the rise of billiards and other aristocratic table games, coming from lawn games (15th century onward)
2. the tilted playfield and pin bagatelle (probably late 18th century)
3. the invention of the springed plunger (debatable, probably mid 1800s)
4. the addition of a coinop mechanism (late 19th century)
5. the "first pinball machines" like Whiffle and Whoopee, with full automated ball circulation
6. electric flippers (1947 onward, beginning with Humpty Dumpty)

1630 engraving by Matthaus Merian shows trou madam being played on a regular table.  The balls are being rolled by hand, no maces or cues used.

1674 illustration showing a gate on the playfield for Port & Kings, showing the use of arches in other table/billiards games.

1782-08-04 troumadam illustration from Gillows records
(from the book A Short Dictionary of Furniture by Gloag)

some updates

new flyer for Marry Computer added to exploring the arcade in Android Kaikader

Lots of new information and pics added to the Tamakorogashi post, basically triple it's initial size now.

transitional electric pachinko machines: check for the entry "Unknown LCD game seen in promo video" and 1977 Sankyo 'Invader'

Added Cambrinus game to the carombolette article.

Expanded the "pin bagatelle" page to include Klondike Pool specifically

Updated on naming the bagatelles to include Klondike Pool.

1938 Bally Operator collections book

 I picked up this Bally Operators' book and I'm very happy to share it with you all.

It's a 50 page notepad with paper and then carbon paper beneath each page.  The operator could fill out the information, do the math, pass the location a copy of the receipt, and keep their carbon-copy records.

It offers a tiny glimpse into the world of pinball in 1938, where payout games were prestigious kings, and most locations would certainly pay-off on a novelty game as well if the cops weren't around.

I do not know where this route was.  

I have photographed all of the pages, compiled the data, and will make it available for download.

page 34: Golden Wheel @ Milltown Diner

AKIRA PINBALL

 WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THEY MADE AN AKIRA PINBALL AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

yeah they used extra-large pinballs as props

OK it's appears to be a custom re-theme for a magazine photo shoot but OMG OMG OMG WANT

The machine used appears to be a Buck Rogers, and you can see how they laid art on top of the original artwork in a VERY effective manner:

The text above says that Mr. Otomo "cut out animation cels" for this machine provided by Taito.  The original design was used for the back art of book #4.  

These all come from the Akira Club book:

on naming the bagatelles

It is hard to definitively understand the world of billiard variants.  The game(s) travelled the world many times over, some names were only used in certain regions, some regional-sounding names were given with little-to-no connection to those territories, and many times historical sources would naively swap names around.

This is another work-in-progress post where I'm going to try and collect some details, but I propose a singular takeaway: LET'S STOP CALLING THINGS "BAGATELLE".  Please?  Bagatelle is a toy home pinball game, it's a musical number, it's a literal TRIFLE synonym, it's a billiard board, it's an antique pin board, it's enough things.   Let's be more specific.

Quick summary of the styles I'm interested in:

9-hole bagatelle / English Bagatelle:  long and thin tables where you shoot from one end to pocket balls in the 9 shallow holes on the playfield.  These tables come up for sale somewhat regularly in the UK, and the folding versions come up occasionally in USA.  You don't often see it referenced as "9-hole bagatelle" but I am calling it that because it's explicitly descriptive.
My entry on 9-hole English bagatelle

Pin Bagatelle / French bagatelle / Parisian bagatelle / Russian Bagatelle / cockamaroo: a slanted table where balls are shot up a channel and then fall down through pins/pegs.  Full-sized tables of this type seem to be very rare / obscure, with smaller toy-sized versions being rather common.  Features like shooting method, playfield gimmicks, and score holes vary, and I use "pin bagatelle" as an overarching category covering these variants.
My entry on pin bagatelle / French bagatelle

Klondike Pool / Tivoli Table / American Bagatelle / Manhattan: very similar to other pin bagatelles, except it employs a holes and a trough system to delivery the balls to the front.  Pretty obscure, but at least some copies are known to exist.  Late 19th century, and primarily American.
My entry on pin bagatelles includes a section on Klondike Pool

Japanese Rolling Ball / Tamakorogashi (玉ころがし) / Billard Japonais / Japanese Billiards: a long table like 9-hole bagatelle, but with holes arranged in rows and given a larger range of point values.  Typically the end of the table is rounded, but sometimes it is rectangular.  No cue is used, balls are rolled by hand.  Many home-made ones exist due to their ease of construction, especially in parts of Europe where it still has popularity as a fair game.
My entry on Japanese Rolling Ball

Pigeon Hole / Trou Madam / Parepa:  has holes to shoot through at one end.  Many 9-hole tables also had an add-on to make it a pigeon-hole table.  Dedicated tables of this type are very rare / obscure, especially the angled Parepa tables.  Pigeon-hole is more often played on English Bagatelle tables by inserting a wooden bridge.
The dedicated Pigeon Hole tables have a trough under the playfield that returns the balls to the front of the table, same as bar billiards.

My entry on pigeon hole / trou madam / bar billiards

1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog

1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog

Most billiard tables can be converted to a table like this by adding a wooden arch made to fit across the narrow cross-section of the playfield.  The game Trou Madam, dating to the 16th century, can have arches like this, and games like Mississippi are played in this manner.

Carombolette:  a variant of pigeon-hole that adds a pin-bagatelle feature on the other side of the gates.  These are very rare / obscure.  The stopper pictured below would allow the table to be played purely as a pigeon hole table.
My entry on carombolette

Bar billiards / Jenny Lind / Russian Billiards: Balls are shot from the front and into holes which channel the balls back to the front of the table.  Played with "skittles" (wooden pieces) on the playfield to avoid.  Common, still made and played today.
My entry on bar billiards
some videos on bar billiards

Jenny Lind Table - holes in the table direct balls to trough at the front
1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog 

Some other table games:

Toupie Hollandaise: no strong connection to billiards or bagatelle, but I'm including because people often lump these in with antique bagatelles.  It has skittles on a flat playfield, to be knocked over by a spinning top.  Also exists as a children's versions.
My entry on Toupie Hollandaise

Bowling Naco:  balls are rolled down and their angle modified by changing the shooter's angle.  Exists as a large parlor game, very popular in children's toys, and also exists as coin-op games.  Including here because it was made into a coin-op game in the 1930s around the time when pin bagatelle went coin-op too.

new art! Gift from Kazuo Sugiyama

I am so incredibly excited to have received a gift from Kazuo Sugiyama, who before he began researching pachinko's origins and opening the Birth Of Pachinko Museum, is a print-maker artist.

the print is now on the wall

I have so much art on the walls throughout my house, but I did have this perfect space ready for it.  (It hangs just below another print, one by Eye Yamataka and signed by members of his band The Boredoms.)

Kazuo Sugiyama and the print!

I am very grateful to receive this.  It arrived safely from Japan.

the print is based off a scene from the 1962 movie キューポラのある街 (Foundry Town), and you can see more of that in my post on Pachinko in Japanese Cinema.

The print was used in Sugiyama's book パチンコ誕生―シネマの世紀の大衆娯楽 (Birth of Pachinko - Entertainment in the Century of Cinema)

Bunco Games To Beware Of

In 1923 writer W.B. Gibson (Walter Gibson!  Author of The Shadow!) began a column called BUNCO GAMES TO BEWARE OF.  He tapped his own carnival experience to explain the 'gamester' ruses that allows for carnival / fair arcade games to be especially profitable.

These were syndicated in newspapers around the USA through 1923-1925.  I have 48 of these articles collected here.  (Some of the later prints of them include their "number" in the series, but only 3 have ever had an order number indicated.)

At the bottom of this post I will include more articles on Walter Gibson and include 2 more introductory advertisements for the series.

I found this series while researching tamakorogashi, and a shady American carnival variant (that was based on Japanese Rolling Ball's success) is listed below as "Japanese Roll-Down".

Most of these games survived many decades, if not a whole century.  Lots of them are purely mechanical gimmicks but some even highlight the new-fangled ELECTRICITY gimmicks, the start of the electro-mechanical arcade era.

The Wheel Of Chance

The following 49 games are included here.  Open any image in a new window to assist in reading.

Airplane Race

Aunt Sarah's Clothes Line

Automatic Bowling Alley

Ball and Cone

Balloon Game

Baseball Rack

Beehive

Big Tom

Candy Wheel

Carnival Clock

Carnival Roulette

Cats On The Rack

Cigaret Shooting Gallery

Coin and the Tenpin

Country Store Wheel

Devil's Bowling Alley

Drop Case

English Pool*

Fish Pond

Flashing Flag

Gravitation Ball Game

Hand Striker

High Striker

Hoop Tossing

Hurdle Ladder

Japanese Roll-Down

Knife Rack

Marble Rolldown

Monkey Slats

Percentage Spindle

Picking Out The Colors

Pop 'Em In

Race Course

Red White & Blue

Roll-A-Race

Rolling Log Faro

Roly-Poly

Shell Game

Shooting Gallery

Silver Arrow

Spotting The Spot

String Game

Swinging Ball

Three Card Monte

Three Pin Game

Throwing Darts

Watch La

Wheel of Chance

Whirling Spindle

*As far as I know, there is only one article missing, on English Pool.  In it's wake, I have included another article by Gibson that describes English Pool.