This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,

and we tell stories about everything here on this show.

And that includes your story. Send them to Our American Stories.com.

They're some of our favorites.

Jeremy Saucere is the Assistant Vice President for Interpretation and Electronic Games,

and he's also the editor of the American Journal of Play

at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

Today, he gives us the exciting history of an American icon,

an American original, The Pinball Machine.

I would say pinball is an American icon.

It traces its roots back to a French parlor table game called Baguetteau.

Sometimes it would be in a form that looks similar to a pool table. The player would get to hit a ball, often with something that resembled acoustic that we would use today in pool.

Initially the idea was to avoid pins. There'd be these little wooden pins and a lot of different versions of the game.

And eventually that evolved into where you actually had fixed pins and scoring holes.

The kind of link that, you know, if you were to say a missing link between Bagotel and Pinball happens in the late 19th century with an English immigrant to America,

Monagyu Redgrave. He patents in 1871 what he called improvements in Bagatelle.

And that introduced the spring-loaded ball shooter, what today we would refer to as the plunger.

The idea of also adding sound effects or sound to the game by putting bells on the playfield.

The first pinball machines made this type of game into a coin-operated machine. It took that playfield and it essentially

monetized it, right? It placed it in a wooden case. It put a piece of glass over the playfield

to separate the player from the game. As you think of ramps and flippers and all those things.

...