Bagatelle - An Evolution lecture at the Field House Museum 2022-08-16

I am delighted to share with you this lecture by James Masters, as given for the Field House Museum (St. Louis, MO, USA) on the history of bagatelle.  

The lecture can be viewed and downloaded on archive.org!

also on youtube:

The lecture was given over Zoom, which ended up being quite ideal since it was attended by people from Canada, USA, UK, Spain, and other countries, as well as a handful of people in person at the museum exhibition itself.

James and I have been writing back and forth for a while know, and he raises a number of key details about the history of bagatelle that have vexed us both:

1) we have no proof about there being any sort of pinball precursor at the legendary Chateau de Bagatelle.  There are many references to the Chateau, but none describe a billiards table of any sort, and only a single source makes claim of a "gaming table".    Comte d'Artois was a known gambling addict, but a gaming table can be any table a game is played, and most often cards.  Until we can verify any specific references, it might be best to let this legend fade into history.

Let's returns to the relevant Bueschel quote, sent to me:

"The remarkable coincidence of the appearance of the new betting game of bagatelle at precisely the time that a leading member of the inner court circle and prince of France known as a sportsman and gambler who also"... kept a gaming table in his own house" in a game room of a building called Bagatelle beggars a connection between the man, the party and the game.""

The quote included by Bueschel there is from a 1903 article in The Nation.  I'll include that here!

1903 The Nation: Chateaux Bagatelle

1903 The Nation: Chateaux Bagatelle

2) I appreciate the disentangling of Fossette from the pinball pre-history...

3) Fancy pin tables in France?  Absolutely.  Just not as early as we might have thought.  Or at least, many of the examples that get passed around as "18th century pinball" are known to be 19th century, especially 2nd-half 19th century.

4) There is a table of mystery in the Deutsche Museum that they claim is from 1770-1790, based purely on the materials and build type.  But there is no provenance.

bagatelle notes: 19th century publications

Let's get some definitions and rules!  We're going to sift through 19th century game books here to trace the language around bagatelle and related games.

It's important to note that some of the dates for these books need to be eyed with skepticism as they might not be accurate to the edition.

1801 / 1810 / 1903 The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England from the Earliest Period: Including the Rural and Domestic Recreations, May Games, Mummeries, Pageants, Processions and Pompous Spectacles by Joseph Strutt

this was first published in 1801, but this edition is from 1903 and has had SUBSTANTIAL editing.  If you know where to locate a proper FIRST edition, please do let me know.

I am including this section on Nine-Holes as it seems potentially relevant.  There is an 1896 article in this prior bagatelle post that that also goes in to bumblepuppy.

excerpt from the 1903 edition, but this also is included in the 1810 edition

I am unsure if Troul In Madame is a corruption of Trou Madam or a variant name given specifically due to the play being done with cues/maces, and so a new name needed.

It says it is "not unlike our modern bagatelle, only played without a cue or mace", but while it's exciting that bagatelle is called "modern", note this from the preface:

this passage does not exist in the 1810 version, so we can't use that to date 'bagatelle'

I had forgotten about The Benefit of the Ancient Bathes of Buckstones, but yes that 1572 work did reference Troule in Madame.

Oh hey look it's that 1572 quote:

A friend offered this modern take on the above text,

The Ladies, Gentle Women, Wives and Maids may in one of the Galleries walk: and if the weather be not agreeable to their expectation, they may have in the end of the Bench eleven holes made, into which to "trowle pummetes" or Bowls of lead, big, little or mean [average], or also of Copper, Tin, Wood, either violent or soft, after their own discretion, the pastime Troule in Madame is termed.

Likewise, men feeble, the same may also practice in another Gallery of the new buildings, and this does not only strengthen the stomach and the upper parts above the midriff or waist: but also the middle parts beneath the sharp "Gristle" and the extreme parts, the the hands and legs, according to the weight of the thing "trouled", fast, soft or mean.

This next text might be the earliest description of what we refer to as "pin bagatelle".  All of the critical components are described: curved top, elevated, a channel to drive the ball up, and it falls down "interrupted in its descent by wires inserted at different distances upon the table, which alter its direction and often throw it entirely out of the proper track."  The 'wires' spoken of here probably refers to gates and/or pins.  It also describes the gates used in games like Mississippi for receiving the balls at the bottom.  While we know Trou Madam can be traced to the 16th century, I am unsure as to the origins of the name 'Mississippi'.

This would lend obvious weight to the idea that pin bagatelle arrived by tilting a trou madam / mississippi table so that balls fell down towards the numbered gates to score.

2 other Rocks of Scilly references passed to me, which don't offer any real extra details but do give proof of existence.

1804-04-05 The Morning Chronicle (London)

1811-05-06 The Leeds Intelligencer and Yorkshire General Advertiser

Here is the entry on Mississippi from the 1810 edition, where it describes it as a billiard-like game where the balls are 'cast' (rolled) towards a set of arches for points.

I had previously thought Mississippi to be exclusively a cue/mace game, but I suppose it started out with just rolling the balls?  It's hard to tell for sure with just this description to go on.

The only real difference I can tell between Trou Madam and Mississippi is that Trou Madam lets you shoot straight into the scoring holes, while in Mississippi you have to bounce of the side bumper.

(James tells me in a chat, "Earlier tables were not smooth, uniform or level so knocking it straight into a hole was more of a challenge.  As table technology improved and maces changed to cues so accuracy also improved, it became too easy.  So then they added the rule that you had to bounce it off a cushion to make it suitably challenging.")

1847: Castles In The Air vol III by Catherine Grace Francis Gore

This is the earliest mention of the game cockamaroo that we've found so far.

p 246 of Castles In The Air vol III

1854: The Handbook of Games...

1854 Hand-Book of Games, edited by Henry G. Bohn

Pinball Machine Maintenance - Manual For The Repair And Maintenance Of Electro Mechanical Pinball Machine (1960-1977) by Henk De Jager

If you've ever been interested in iterations of EM technology this book is for you.  It's an EM pinball maintenance guide, but it outlines all of the various systems that Bally, Williams, and Gottlieb used over the years, and explains what each improvement in design is doing.  There are very few places to get an understanding of how the technology changed and evolved over the years.

Pinball Machine Maintenance - Manual For The Repair And Maintenance Of Electro Mechanical Pinball Machine (1960-1977) at archive.org

bar billiards

I am moving all of my bar billiards notes into a single post.  (It previously had bounced around as a sub-category in other posts.)

Bar Billiards

 

I had moved Bar Billiards with the Pigeon Hole tables at first, since the template for it arrived around the same time as Pigeon Hole tables were popular.  Now it's here on its own.  You can see a prior post with a good video on bar billiards.

It apparently came to the UK via Belgium (as Russian Billiards?) circa 1930s, but that's a highly suspect history considering the precursor tables with the same layout and features existed in 1880, and then the trough that returns balls to the front appeared with Klondike Pool.

The game had playfield holes and troughs let the balls roll to the front, making it perfect for a bar where surrounding space was limited.  The player always shoots from the front.

It is a 20th century game so I won't be spending much time on it, but I would like to see if there is evidence to better trace the 19th century tables to the present-day bar billiards machines.

It is also lays forth the inspiration for the "totalizer", a key innovation in the development of pinball in 1933.

Are we going to just rest on the story that "bar billiards came from Belgium around 1930" when this existed in the USA in 1872?

Jenny Lind table in the 1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog

some great EM videos

A number of really great EM videos have been posted recently.  Here are some treats:

Restoration (pics) and gameplay of a 1968 Moto-Polo by Sega:

A very special find: footage from the 1976 full motion video game Sky Hawk by Nintendo.  Note the game's data encoded on the bottom half of the screen.

A visual tour through a flasher slot machine:

Randy Senna showing off the first linked driving game, which was built for Disney.

An in-depth tour inside Kasco's 1978 game The Driver

my want list

This has come up a few times recently so I've decided to publicly share my "want list".  I am going to specify the geographic region for each, since most people tend to know machines from one geographic area above all others.

Most Wanted:  These are machines that are my top priority.  I am willing to pay for international shipping to make any of these happen.

Japan - 1977 Vanishing Point - バニシングポイント by 豊栄産業 (Hoei Sangyo) or 1978 世界一周ゲーム (Round The World game) by 柿崎計器 有限会社 (Kakizaki Keiki) or Space Trip by unknown or 1978 Super Cars - スーパーカー by 柿崎計器 (Kakizaki Keiki) 

These are essentially the same game except with different graphics.  Round The  World has at least 2 variant graphics.  There is also a game from 1984 called Mr. ジャンプくん (Mr. Jump-kun) by ケーアンドユー商会 (K&U Company) but it is a full upright, and I'd only want to ship the top half.

1977 Vanishing Point - バニシングポイント by 豊栄産業 (Hoei Sangyo)

1978 世界一周ゲーム (Round The World game) by 柿崎計器 (Kakizaki Keiki)

~1978 Space Trip by 豊栄産業 (Hoei Sangyo) [presumed]

1978 Super Cars - スーパーカー by 柿崎計器 (Kakizaki Keiki)

North America - 1932 The Maple Leaf by Automatic Industries (I want to document more on one of the few Canadian manufacturers!)

Japan - 1950s Smart Ball or Lucky Ball table (I have one of these, but I want one in Very Good condition)

Japan - any Japanese machines from before World War 2.  as an example... 

plus, pachinko machines from the 30s to 40s:

I am interested in any old pachinko machines that look like just a grid of nails:

any pachinko machine that outputs a coin or token instead of balls

Miscellaneous:

• Research materials on Japanese games - this is all on a separate page.  Catalogs, flyers, and other ephemera from Japan circa 1975 and before are desperately needed.
• Mills Novelty circular 125 G circa 1906, or any Mills documentation of their "Japanese Booth" or "Japanese Rolling Ball" setup.
• arcade marquees wanted:
• Strider (Capcom)
• Dark Planet (Stern)
• Ninja (Sega, 1985)
• Roller Aces (Williams)
• Super Spacefortress Macross (Fabtek)
• Time Gal (Taito, 1985)
• Electronic Fantasy (Taito)
• Quiz Dragon (Capcom)
• plus a few more, message me for a full list
• pinball backglasses wanted:
• Women's-Lib (Sega)
• Fairy (Playmatic)
• Star-Jet (1963, Bally)
• Flip A Card / Card Trix (1970, Gottlieb)
• Star Trek (1971, Gottlieb)

bagatelle exhibit + lecture at the Field House Museum

There will be a talk about bagatelle on 2022-08-10!  (that's tomorrow, as I write this)

FB event link, eventbrite link (use the eventbrite link to reserve for the lecture!)
remember, it is 2pm EST

I've been writing back and forth with James for a year or so and I'm super excited for this talk!   He runs the store Masters Traditional Games and the wonderful resource site TradGames: The Online Guide to Traditional Games

Join the Field House Museum on Wednesday, August 10, at 1:00 pm for a Speaker Series that takes Bagatelle from the parlor to the arcade. Gaming expert and creator of the Online Guide to Traditional Games website, James Masters, will join us via Zoom, all the way from the UK! Masters will share his passion and interest in the evolution of the table game through to pinball. For those joining us in person for the watch party, explore our main gallery exhibit, "Bagatelle," after the presentation.

This presentation will primarily take place on Zoom, but the Field House Museum will host a small watch party during the event. Reservations must be made in advance through Eventbrite, by calling the Museum at 314-421-4689, or by emailing info@fieldhousemuseum.org.

About the Speaker:

James Masters has been into the history, mathematics, strategy, camaraderie, rules, and even the playing of games since early childhood. His interests tend to whirl around pub games, table games, ancient board games, and how games of all sorts evolve over time. Author of the Online Guide to Traditional Games website and maintainer of the Games Research Database, most recently, he has completed a paper on the medieval sport of Loggats and an article on the ancient Egyptian game of Mehen for the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

The Field House Museum in St. Louis, MO is currently hosting a marvelous exhibition of bagatelles from Ed Nickel's collection.  Here are a few pictures that were sent to me by Ed:

And from the Field House Museum staff:

Between the knowledge of Ed Nickels in the USA, James Masters in the UK, Wayne Morgan in Canada, and Kazuo Sugiyama in Japan, we are piecing together a robust history of bagatelle and related table games.

We do need someone from Finland to discuss the history of Fortunaa, perhaps...

fixing 2 bugs in Kick Off

I realized my arcade room had been askew for about 2 months since I had been neglecting it.  The games were all shoved aside to give me access to Kick Off's backbox.... and then I just got distracted by life and other projects.  One goal of the weekend was to get things back in to a state of order!

The first issue with Kick Off was that on player 1 the 10,000 reel wasn't resetting.  I've dealt with this many times on Gottlieb machines, but Kick Off is my first Bally.  The principles aren't widely different, just things shuffled around and renamed a bit.

Here is the part of the schematic dealing with the scoring reels:

some more bagatelle notes

In this post I am going to be dumping references to bagatelle from some newspapers.  Many of these clips I'll later sift into the more overarching posts on this topic.  (will this post disappear if I integrate stuff into older posts on these topics?  Unsure...)

Below the cut you'll find information on bagatelle, russian billiards, bar billiards, etc

Doing a search through New York Historic Newspapers, the earliest mention of bagatelle to mean a game (on that site) seems to be 1819.

1819-08-17 Lansingburgh Gazette 

(if I go to your house and you have bagatelles and aeolian harps, I'll be very impressed)

The tamakorogashi book is out! ものと人間の文化史 188 玉ころがし by 杉山 一夫 (Cultural History of Things and Humans 188 Rolling Balls by Kazuo Sugiyama)

Look what arrived today!  Last year I spent many long hours as a research assistant for this book and I'm excited to get my hands on it.

Cultural History of Things and Humans 188 Rolling Balls by Kazuo Sugiyama

The cover overlay features a graphic taken from a "Japanese Ball Game" I purchased, and paid to have digitally restored:

go to the tamakorogashi article for more details!

The book is published by Hosei University Press [ISBN978-4-588-21881-1] and is 370 pages of pre-arcade history for all of the Meiji-era fans in your life. :)

My central thesis around Japanese Rolling Ball was that it was the central ancestor of modern day redemption arcades.  It directly evolved into Fascination and Pokerino as electricity became available, seems to have inspired the invention of skee-ball, and was used as inspiration for a new type of carnival barker game.

Documenting the birth of the earliest redemption arcade models is, for me, the most important achievement of this research.

Available for purchase at Amazon Japan, Honto, Rakuten, and other places.

Hey it's me!
This is now the 2nd book from Japan with my name in it :)
But this time my name appears a few more times, and the research I did is spread out through the entire book.