The balls became marbles and the wickets became small metal pins. The game also shrank in size to fit atop a bar or counter. Patent #115,357 for his "Improvements in Bagatelle", another name for the spring launcher that was first introduced in Billard japonais. In 1869, British inventor Montague Redgrave settled in the United States and manufactured bagatelle tables in Cincinnati, Ohio. 1869: Spring launchers become mainstream The player shot balls up the inclined playfield toward the scoring targets using this plunger, a device that remains in use in pinball to this day, and the game was also directly ancestral to pachinko. It used thin metal pins and replaced the cue at the player's end of the table with a coiled spring and a plunger. Somewhere between the 1750s and 1770s, the bagatelle variant Billard japonais, or Japanese billiards in English, was invented in Western Europe, despite its name. A standardized version of the game eventually became known as bagatelle. Players could ricochet balls off the pins to achieve the more challenging scorable holes. Pins took too long to reset when knocked down, so they were eventually fixed to the table, and holes in the table's bed became the targets. In France, during the long 1643–1715 reign of Louis XIV, billiard tables were narrowed, with wooden pins or skittles at one end of the table, and players would shoot balls with a stick or cue from the other end, in a game inspired as much by bowling as billiards. It already has a spring mechanism to propel the ball, 100 years before Montague Redgrave's patent. Late 18th century: Spring launcher invented īillard japonais, Southern Germany/Alsace ca. The tabletop versions of these games became the ancestors of modern pinball. The evolution of outdoor games finally led to indoor versions that could be played on a table, such as billiards, or on the floor of a pub, like bowling and shuffleboard. Croquet, golf and pall-mall eventually derived from ground billiards variants. Games played outdoors by rolling balls or stones on a grass course, such as bocce or bowls, eventually evolved into various local ground billiards games played by hitting the balls with sticks and propelling them at targets, often around obstacles. The origins of pinball are intertwined with the history of many other games.
History Pre-modern: Development of outdoor and tabletop ball games 1.8 1980s and 1990s: Pinball in the digital age.1.7 1970s: Solid-state electronics and digital displays introduced.1.5 1933: Electrification and active bumpers introduced.1.3 1869: Spring launchers become mainstream.
1.2 Late 18th century: Spring launcher invented.1.1 Pre-modern: Development of outdoor and tabletop ball games.