Talk:Bagatelle

Any early American sources

I moved this here.: "Some French soldiers carried their favorite bagatelle tables with them to America while helping to fight the British in the American Revolutionary War." The game first surfaced in 1777. A first mention in an American context would be more enlightening. --Wetman 22:58, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Billard Japonais

Unresolved

 – Lead not yet followed up with reliable sources.

While trying to find the origin of pachinko, I presumed that it would be bagatelle, the common ancestor of pinball and originating in France or Italy based on billiards. However, at about the same time as the first bagatell boards are being sited in france there is a "Billard Japonais" board in Alsace (France/Germany). Does anyone know the origin of Billard Japonais? Did bagatelle in fact come from Japan? The Japanese have quite a history of making mechanical toys. --Timtak (talk) 23:08, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Worth looking into! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:10, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Children's bagatelle

In sources "Bagatelle - History and Useful Information". by James Masters says:

The name Bagatelle these days is far more likely to conjure up the image of the children's pastime wherein marbles or ball bearings are shot onto a board which features areas fenced in by nails hammered into its surface

While Master's article is not the most reliable, it would make a reasonable template for what to include in this article and for possible section headers eg:

• Old English bagatelle --perhaps "Old bagatelle"?
• Children's bagatelle --perhaps as Masters calls it "Parlour bagatelle"?

It is the children's type game which is closely connected to Pinball & Pachinko. Reading this current Wikipedia article with its emphasis on a game like bar billiards one is hard pressed to see see the similarities. -- PBS (talk) 00:35, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed it needs work, and two sections are probably the best way to handle it. However, I think that the article should focus on the more billiards-like game, as it is the older and more widespread. The children's version was essentially a short-lived intermediary variant, a proto-pachinko. Another way of looking at it is that eminently reliable sources like Shamos and Stein & Rubino devote a lot of time and detail to the "grown up" game, and solid sources on the kiddie version seem to be scarce. That said, the children's game is certainly notable and is important to the history of pinball. I'll see what I can dig up on it over time. I'm slowly amassing a lot of game-related reference books. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 04:40, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Sources for article expansion

More on the game and its variants at EB9 and 11, though more modern authoritative sources are also welcomed. — LlywelynII 03:08, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the above. The first paragraph of the article is highly speculative, and gives no substantive references. It also used the word "probably," which denotes an opinion, not fact. Skaizun (talk) 21:57, 15 September 2019 (UTC)