Uncle John’s Ultimate Bathroom Reader by Bathroom Readers’ Institute

Author:Bathroom Readers’ Institute [Bathroom Readers’ Institute]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Portable Press

The average caterpillar has 2,000 muscles in its body; the average human, 700.

THE PINBALL STORY

If you like pinball (and who doesn’t?), here’s the next best thing to actually having a machine in the bathroom. Hmm…interesting idea. Imagine what it would sound like to people waiting to use the toilet. “What are you doing in there? What’s that noise? Hey, are you playing pinball?!!?”

ROLLING STONE

Have you ever heard of a game called Bagatelle? No one plays it anymore, but for centuries it was one of the most popular pastimes of the European upper classes. Originally, it was played outside. People threw stones up a hill and hoped that, as the stones rolled down, they’d fall into holes that had been dug in the hillside.

By the middle of the 17th century, the game was played indoors. Players pushed small balls up an inclined felt board with a stick, then let the balls go. Again, the object was to get the balls to drop into holes. But now each hole was surrounded by small pins (actually brass nails) to make it harder. The more points a hole was worth, the more pins were nailed around it. That, of course, is how pinball got its name.

THE NEXT STEP

Bagatelle remained popular in various forms for centuries. But modern pinball didn’t evolve until 1931, when game manufacturer David Gottlieb created a version called Baffle Ball. He made two important changes to Bagatelle:

1. He incorporated a spring-loaded mechanism (virtually indistinguishable from modern-day pinball shooters), so balls were launched rather than pushed or dropped.

2. He made it a coin-operated machine, designed to sit on retailers’ countertops.

There weren’t any lights, bells, mechanical bumpers, or even flippers. Players shook and jostled the machine (technically, they weren’t even supposed to do that) to get the ball into one of the high-scoring holes.

But it was an appealing diversion during the Great Depression, and was very popular.

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