Much like Satan and rock ânâ roll, there was a time when pinball was the scapegoat for corrupting youth.
For years, a pinball prohibition outlawed or heavily restricted pinball machines in cities across America. It wasnât until the late â70s that, in an effort to increase revenue, the New York City City Council overturned all pinball prohibition after a man named Roger Sharpe, âthe man who saved pinball,â demonstrated that it was a game of skill and not chance.
Pinball machines, or pins, for short, grew in sophistication as technology allowed, from the earliest electro-magnetic machines, which were 100 per-cent analog; to the solid-state era, which saw computer boards and digital sound running the show; to the addition of dot-matrix displays, or DMDs, in the early â90s.