The Story of When America Outlawed Pinball

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Transcript:

When you hear the word prohibition, you’re very likely to think of the alcohol ban during the 1920s and 30s. However, there is another prohibition in the last century of American history that you MIGHT not have heard about until now.
But in fact, there was once a time when Pinball was outlawed nationwide, held amongst the ranks of the lowest scoundrels and moonshiners. How did a simple arcade game become such a target though, and how did we ever manage to claw back our right to play? Let’s find out.

Pinball was first born in the public eye in 1931, with the production of the first coin-operated machine. Flippers didn’t exist at the time, so patrons would pop in a quarter, and let fate guide their ball to different slots, indicating rewards such as free games, chewing gum, and even jewelry. While this luck-based game already had law enforcement interested, the real blow came in the form of churches and school boards, who argued that children were likely to steal coins and ditch school in order to go satiate their gambling habits.

The then-current mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia was an especially passionate opponent of pinball machines, arguing that the industry stole millions of dollars of children’s lunch money every year. After he took down the rising illegal slot machine market, Pinball machines were next.

During the Pinball Crusade, America would be thrust into a greater conflict with the bombing of WWII, which inadvertently made for a compelling case in the much smaller war against Pinball machines. LaGuardia insisted that these machines were wasting time and more importantly, precious materials that quote “the metal in these evil contraptions could be manufactured into arms and bullets which can be used to destroy our foreign enemies.”

After the City Council approved LaGuardia’s ban on the machines, police squads raided the city for every machine they could find. Over 2,000 machines were rounded up and smashed with sledgehammers in front of the press as a declaration of war. Despite the claims of wasted material, these machines avoided recycling and instead were sent to the bottom of the Long Island Sound to rot. Many other major American Cities would soon follow the lead set by New York, and slowly pinball was driven underground to become a staple of rebel culture.

Pinballs reputation would persist for decades, long after even the invention of the flipper which took out the luck factor. Despite being underground, Pinball would never stay out of politics for long, coming up in bribery cases, smuggling operations, and political smear campaigns. It wouldn’t be until 1974 when the California supreme court ruled Pinball as a game of skill than chance, and overturned the state’s prohibition.

Three decades after New York’s pinball crusade, the city council still stayed strong on their opposition. That is, until one of the top players in the country, Roger Sharpe demonstrated to them in a Manhattan Courtroom just how skill-based the game was, by calling each of his shots before landing them in a feat of impressive skill. That same day, the ban on machines in New York was finally lifted, setting a blaze that would bring down barriers nation-wide, soon inciting the Golden Age of Pinball.



References:

https://www.history.com/news/that-tim...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball


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