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)