bagatelle notes: pin bagatelles / French bagatelle / Klondike Pool

Here we have the innovation that truly scratches the gambler's itch:  the entire table is slanted, ensuring the balls always roll down towards the player, and introduces a strong element of chance.

These designs would be imitated by the toy bagatelles of the 1800s, which would eventually include a spring plunger in the 2nd half of the 19th century. (citations needed!)

Previous entries in this series include bagatelle notes, and carombolette notes.

These slanted tables tend to also get called bagatelle interchangeably with the flat billiard-style ones, which is why I like say "pin bagatelle" as the overarching category.   AFAIK there was never any steadfast naming convention, which mirrors billiards whole convoluted history, rife with variants of design and rules.

According to Bueschel's Encyclopedia of Pinball, it was "cockamaroo" that added the left channel and the scoring pockets along the bottom, but it's quite rare to find tables that don't have them.  

CHEVROT & LE BON

F 101, Avenue Montaigne Paris Très belle table de Billard chinois Placage de palissandre vernis, métal et bronze doré France, Paris, fin du XXème siècle Nous y joignons une queue de billard et des billes en bois (restaurations à la partie recevant les billes) Haut.: 103 cm - Larg.: 86 cm - Prof.: 105 cm Inventaire de la collection n°686 Modèle similaire à celui livré en 1862 pour le Salon des Cartes au château de Compiègne. Un autre exemplaire est conservé au château de Fontainebleau. Ce jeux à l'origine de salon sera par la suite exploité par les forains Very beautiful Chinese Billiards table - Varnished rosewood veneer, gold metal and bronze - Billiard queues and balls included (restoration for recipient) - H: 40" W: 33" D: 22" DM
cornettedesaintcyr

Oh will you look at that ornamental gate with the ball and drawbridge!  Incredibly cute.  Also a rather expensive table.

a note on bar billiards

Just because I've been on an "evolution of bagatelle" kick, I watched some bar billiards videos and thought the disparity of them was pretty funny.

For amateurs?  Bar billiards seems tonnes of fun.  Check this great explainer and demonstration video:

For pros?  Wow, if this isn't the most boring thing to watch.  They need a rule where if the playfield is empty, a ball must touch the cushion once for your shot to be validated.

Added 2025-03-19:

 

Saida Shokai pachinko circa 1938

Some further updates on the early pachinko machine I got, the Saida Shokai machine is identifiable partially due to the plate around the hole where you insert the ball:

ball entry plate

When I sent this is Kazuo Sugiyama he confirmed that it was likely a Saida machine, and specifically the style that appears in his book on Pachinko history, page 197.

page 197 of Cultural History of Things and Humans: PACHINKO (ものと人間の文化史 186: パチンコ by 杉山 一夫)

This machine is now believed to originally be from around 1938.  What makes it truly special is that the ball you insert immediately goes to the back of machine to the jackpot bin.  On it's way there it trips a lever and a ball is released into the playfield.  Each time you play, the exact same ball is used.  The balls that the player inserts never go to the playfield.

This is similar to the European allwin design, where there would be one ball in the machine, which got released upon inserting a coin.  Instead of a coin, the player inserts a ball, which then falls to the payout section in the back.

For me this is a very special machine to help bridge the history of pachinko to the lineage of coin-op game machines.  The machine is heavily restored and I don't know how much of the hardware is truly original, but that also means I can actually use it for my history booths and don't have to worry about it being a super fragile museum piece.  I also love that it is pre-WW2!

currency

Moving some stuff around.  Here are the 11 types of currency my arcade uses

Twenty One (by Groetchen, 1936)

Hello it's time for more mathematics!   Yes, I managed to get this lovely little restored trade stimulator from 1936:

Twenty One (21) by Groetchen circa 1936

These are devilish little machines designed to trick the player in to thinking it's a skill game.  Please be advised of a little operator secret:  these are NOT skill games.  The fix is in, and it's designed for you to lose, and to hopefully make you think it's your fault you lost.

We'll dive in to the mathematics of that a bit later, but first a gameplay overview:  place a nickel in, pull the handle down, and the reels spin.  The left-most windows (5, 4, 3) will all have a shutter close in front of them.  You have your two cards (windows labeled 2 & 1).  Want another card?  You can press the button under window 3 to reveal it.  Want another card?  Do the same for button 4.  When you are satisfied with your hand, press button 5 to reveal the dealer's hand.  You can't press button 4 until 3 is press, forcing an order.  Once you press button 5, the other 2 window buttons are disabled.  If you stand on 3 cards and reveal the dealer's hand, there is no way for the played to know what window 4 had.

When it arrived it was super sluggish and not really spinning at all.  I went inside:

some updates to older posts

I now own the 1-2-3 from Coin Craft Canada!  A friend of mine is going to be working on it.

check 1929 in the Tamakorogashi - Japanese Roll Ball - 玉ころがし post for a new entry.

New movie added to the exploring pachinko in Japanese cinema... post: 1975 - 濡れた欲情　ひらけ！チューリップ (Wet Lust: Opening the Tulip)

bagatelle notes: Carombolette and more

Carombolette seems to have been a bit of a novelty billiards table.  It took the "pigeon holes" / wooden gates / Mississippi bagatelle arches and introduced a tantalizing playground of pins and pockets you could apply some strategy to, but played heavily on chance.  Perhaps a compromise between the erratic nature of slanted pintable bagatelle and the more traditional billiards games?

 

This also seems to an early appearance of the stationary bell on a larger table, centered in the highest scoring pockets so to ring when a ball enters it.  Prior tables all have hanging bells that are chimed by the ball passing under.  I wonder if this would have been influenced from the Redgrave parlor bagatelles that arrived in the late 1870s?

The slant of the back portion of the playfield ensures gravity takes over and absolute control by the player is a bit of an illusion.  There was still a strong skill component in shooting the balls down the table and through the gates, but the randomness offers tantalization, and probably made it exceptionally fun for people to bet on.

To look at simpler bagatelles, go to this earlier post.  And we look at slanted pintable bagatelles.

Note: this article we re-edited on 2025-03-17

 

The earliest confirmed date we have for Carombolette is 1881, via USA patent 0242584, filed by M. Bensinger.

USA patent 0242584

USA patent 0242584

USA patent 0242584

 

Rearranging those patent drawings...

 

Thanks to the wonderful Brunswick archives, the earliest ad copy we've seen so far is from this 1883 catalogue: J.M. Brunswick & Balke Co. The Most Extensive Manufacturers Of Billiard And Pool Tables And General Billiard Supplies. (archive)

these are from the 1883 Brunswick catalogue

Carombolette!  You can see the wooden pool stop which would plug the holes so you could play like Pigeon Hole.

 

It would be fair to cast doubt on claims of carombolette tables from before 1881.  To be honest   For example...

This is a description given by the auction house.  Please note that auction descriptions are NOTORIOUS for their inaccuracies.  We have no evidence of the Count D'Artois having a pin bagatelle table, that's currently just a folk tale.  Where did the auction house get the 1857 date?  No one knows.

Montague Redgrave Bagatelle Company PARLOR BAGATE
1857. Impossible to find. This is the only one I have ever seen in the past 35 years of collecting. Complete restoration from top to bottom. This is the forerunner of pinball; first named around 1777 France, by King Louis 16ths brother Count D'Artois. This game has a Solid Slate playfield underneath the new felt covering. Redgrave was the first to make small games with a coil spring and a shooting rod which we now call the "ball shooter or plunger" which was patented in the USA. These games were so popular that he made larger ones like this particular model for Saloons and Beer Halls. This game was originally played with "Wickets" not Cue Sticks. This is a real find for the player and the historian alike. Degree of play difficulty: Very hard because we don't have the rules.
Condition Overall Condition (10). Size 104" L. 
liveauctioneers

This one has 9 gates and after the gates it slopes downward. 12 playfield holes, plus 3 pegged areas with bells inside.  Note the bolts used.  Do those look like bolts from 1857?  Do the legs? Still, I am happy to have the photographs.