What is a ‘mechanical’ pinball machine?
Mechanical pinball machines are the earliest coin operated pinball games, dating from the early 1930’s and before. They are usually rather small, usually made of wood, and use glass marbles for pinballs. They have many holes in their playfields with scores assigned to each one, and the winning strategy is to put the pinball into the highest scoring holes as possible. These are direct descendants of ‘bagatelle’ type games from the 1880’s.
