Pinball Expo 2024: prewar booth and more

I spent the last weekend in Chicago, USA, For the 40th anniversary of pinball expo. 

Pinball Expo 8am Wednesday morning

I was there to help my friends Cliff & Colleen of Tap91 Gameroom run the pre-war pinball booth. This was a lot of hard work, and 14-hour days, but it was all pinball and it made me very happy.  We also teamed up with Jeff of HistoryOfPinball.org and Bryan.

booth layout plan

We ran a prewar-only tournament on Friday and Saturday, as well gave out medals for people that could meet difficult challenges that were placed on some of the machines.

The prewar booth received the award for first place booth at Expo. 

<3 <3

Making friends

high-voltage!

On Thursday I was on the panel "Collecting Pinball Machines from the Birth of Pinball to the 1930s".  My talk is the first 20 minutes of this video:

Note: I have edited this post to include the transcript of my speech.  Scroll down to the very bottom for the full text.

I have made an amendment to the section about toupie hollandaise.  My suggestion in regards to the bell sometimes beneath a table was sloppy. 

 

the teeny tiny table games

There's 10 of them now.  10!

How did this happen?  A Redgrave bagatelle had been on my wantlist for a while.  Then shortly after I discovered an auction in the UK for a scaled-down bar billiards table at a good price, and I had to go for it.  I do not think that the Singer bagatelle will be sticking around.

For the sake of discussing them, I will number them.  Tables number 1, 2, 5, 6, and 10 are all miniature / toy versions of tables that are regularly full-sized, usually 7-10 feet in length.  Tables 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9 are all made for the home parlor / toy market.

1. Cockamaroo: Seems to have began early 1800s.  Left and right shooter lane, and uses a cue or mace for both.  Place a King Ball at the top dot, and then there are 6 cups to land in on the way down, plus scoring columns along the bottom.
2. Pin bagatelle with plunger, first seen mid 1800s.  An example of how bells were introduced into the game.  Dual shooting lanes, with one for the plunger, one for shooting with a cue.  There is no King Ball spot here.
3. 1876 Redgrave bagatelle.  First USA patented coiled spring plunger from the front of the table, the way we now know with contemporary pinball.
4. Singer bagatelle: different style of plunger to avoid Redgrave's patent.  This has scoring slots along the bottom, a remnant from cockamaroo that would disappear by the 20th century.
5. 9-hole English bagatelle:  the classic English Bagatelle layout, 1 center cup encircled by 8 others.  Still played within some parts of the UK and USA.
6. Japanese rolling ball table: by 1870 there were variants of the English Bagetelle table sold that had cups in multiple lines.  In Japan, early meiji era, tables like this were used for ball rolling, and points exchanged for prizes.  This is the birth of modern redemption arcades.
7. Japanese rolling ball toy:  After the success of Japanese Rolling Ball in the USA, toy versions were sold from the 1900s to 1950s, though only some models had references to the Japanese origin.
8. Poolette: post-ww2 bagatelle toy from Japan, similar to Corinthian tables popular in the early 30s
9. 20th century bagatelle toy from the UK.  Corinthian style board, but with springed plunger and bakelite (maybe) plastic surface.
10. Bar Billiards: supposed "arriving from the Dutch" in the 1930s, bar billiards is still popular in parts of the UK today, as well as in a few other countries.  Sometimes referred to as "Russian Billiards", the game has under-table troughs to bring sunk balls to the labeled point slots at the front.

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.

 

From what appears to be the original 1801 edition, a scan done by Google Books:

(the characters that look like a long "f" are actually pronounced as "s".)

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

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)

lining up the bagatelles

1: English bagatelle / 9 hole bagatelle (UK)
2: Japanese Rolling Ball / Tamakorogashi (Japan)
3: Cockamaroo / French bagatelle (UK)
4: French bagatelle (France)
5: Singer parlor bagatelle (USA)
6: Poolette bagatelle (Japan)

How did we get here?

Well before all of these you'd find the early billiards variants, including trou madam.  On table (1) there lies a set of wooden gates, allowing one to play trou madam and similar games on that table.  English bagatelle, with the inlaid cups, seems to have sprung up early 1800s.

In the 1870s there is evidence of tables like (1) being made with holes in parallel rows, akin to (2).  I think these tables were the inspiration for Japanese Rolling Ball, which came up around 1880 in Japan, 1902 in USA + Canada, and then about 1930 within Europe.

If you note the bottom scoring slots in table (3), you'll they're quite similar to the wooden gates available on (1).  A key innovation would be taking a trou madam table and putting it on an incline.  Shoot the balls up, and have them fall down in to the separated scoring arches.  I am currently unsure if that innovation predates English Bagatelle (1) but it also seems like the kind of innovation that could have happened at in a number of eras and in a number of different areas.

It can be easy enough to infer how the cups of (1) migrated along the playfield of (3), the pigeon hole arches going to the bottom, and then pins added as obstacles.

Table (4) adds a spring plunger on one side, and maintains a cue lane on the right-hand side.  Table (4) also has arches, which were an accessory to some billiards games going back to the 17th century at least, but were perhaps an innovation that was once again fresh at the time.  Bells are also a new addition.

Table (5) does away with the cue altogether, relying exclusively on a spring plunger.

Table (6) is an example of how for some games the cue was kept instead of a spring plunger.

assembling the bite-sized bagatelles

 coming to a pinball history booth near you.... someday...

banana for size

Left to right:

1. Singer parlor bagatelle (spring-loaded plunger shooter, but it's missing)
2. Poolette (small cue to launch balls)
3. French bagatelle / cockamaroo (balls launched from left/right troughs using a cue)
4. 9-hole English bagatelle (balls hit with mace or cue)
5. Japanese Rolling Ball (balls rolled by hand)

9-hole bagatelle

New arrival!  This is the classic 9-hole English Bagatelle that you will see quite often if you search antique auctions for "bagatelle".  The earliest references we've found so far to this game are from around 1830.

While the full tables are normally 7-10 feet long, this is a kids' version that is only 4 feet long.  For a while I had been looking for a proper full-size one, but they are actually hard to come by in North America, and shipping a full one from overseas would have been prohibitive.

Made for the toy shop Hamley's, I believe what I have here is what we see in this clipping from the Hamleys Toy Shop 1937 catalogue

1937 Hamleys Toy Shop catalogue

It is interesting to note the inclusion of a kids-sized bar billiards table, which would have been a quite recent trend in Britain at that time.  I would love to find a small bar billiards table like that too.

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.

9-hole bagatelle notes

This is another work-in-progress post so I can keep a visual log of the different bagatelle styles and bits of information I find.   The "history of pinball" didn't start here.  Bagatelle was just another note in the history of aristocratic gaming that goes back hundreds and thousands of years throughout humanity.  But this is a good jumping off point because around the time of bagatelle is when international trading really picked up the pace, and we can start tracing cultural exchanges from countries around the globe.

There are a few general styles:  The most common is the style of bagatelle that also became "Japanese Rolling Ball" (with a few differences,) where you have an arrangement of 9 pockets at one end.  Board is not slanted.  It is flat like a billiards table.  These all seems to be European here, and would be played with a cue with a mace (cue with a paddle on the end,) or with a traditional-style pool cue.

The main difference of Japanese Rolling Ball is that the balls would be rolled by hand.  And the few examples I've seen have 10 holes arranged more in a grid fashion.

A few here have an accessory to add gates to the playfield.  These variants will be lumped in here.  It wouldn't take much to convert a table like this in to a Pigeon Hole table.

The game from here went in a few branches.  Extra holes added at the ends.  Holes that led to troughs for scoring.  Playfield obstacles added.  Loose pins added to the playfield.  Fixed pins added to the playfield.

What truly marks the beginning of innovation that would lead to modern pinball is when they decided to slant the playing field.  We will get to those in a second posts.

1860 9-hole English bagatelle as seen at Pinball Expo 2024

For now, let's look at pretty bagatelle pictures: