WelcomeFOLLOW THE BOUNCING BALL
PULL BACK THE LAUNCHER AND LET GO. The silver ball rides up the side, follows the curve at the top, and then begins to descend. This is the much-anticipated moment that makes playing pinball so great. You just don’t know what the ball is going to do.
Michael Schiess of Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Gallery (ujuju.com), profiled in our pinball feature (see page 74), gave me a brief history of the game. Pinball started as a French game known as bagatelle, something the aristocracy enjoyed playing.
The playfield was a raked wooden board with fixed pins. The ball was launched with a cue; it would bounce off the pins and eventually drop into holes, which had number values for scoring. During the American Revolution, ...
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