Pinball was banned from the early 1940s to the mid-1970s in most of America's big cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, where the game was born and where virtually all of its manufacturers have historically been located. The stated reason for the bans: pinball was a game of chance, not skill, and so it was a form of gambling. To be fair, pinball really did involve a lot less skill in the early years of the game—largely because the flipper wasn't invented until 1947, five years after most of the bans were implemented (up until then, players would bump and tilt the machines in order to sway the ball's gravity). Many lawmakers also believed pinball to be a mafia-run racket, and a time- and dime-waster for impressionable youth. (The machines robbed the "pockets of school children in the form of nickels and dimes given them as lunch money," New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia wrote in a Supreme Court affidavit.)

In New York, the pinball ban was executed in a particularly dramatic fashion. Just weeks after Pearl Harbor was attacked, Mayor Fiorello Henry La Guardia issued an ultimatum to the city's police force stating that their top priority would be to round up pinball machines and arrest their owners. La Guardia proceeded to spearhead massive Prohibition-style raids in which thousands of machines were rounded up in a matter of days, before being dramatically smashed with sledgehammers by the mayor and police commissioner. The machines were then dumped into the city's rivers.

Although pinball was illegal in New York, it did not disappear entirely—it just moved behind curtains to seedy pornography shops, in places like Harlem and the Village. And the police were still raiding illegal pinball operators through the 1970s.

During World War II, much of America's manufacturing infrastructure switched over to the war effort. The pinball industry, which was a major user of copper wiring, was no exception. During the war, few new games were made. Instead, pinball suppliers began selling so-called conversion kits, which would allow pinball operators to transform a machine's artwork to a fresh theme. These conversion themes often took the form of war-time motifs, such as the patriotic "Victory in the Pacific."

Because pinball was illegal for so long, it became a symbol of youth and rebellion. If you watch a movie or TV show that was either produced or takes place during this period, virtually any time pinball makes an appearance, it is for the purpose of portraying to the audience that a particular character is a rebel. For example, the Fonz is regularly seen playing pinball in Happy Days episodes. And when Tommy, The Who's pinball-wizard-themed rock opera album came out in 1972, pinball was still banned in much of the country. The album's use of pinball is largely misunderstood by today's audiences who may view the deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard as quirky. In all likelihood, The Who was using the game to portray the titular character as anti-authoritarian. Filmmaker Richard Linklater makes use of this symbol in a significant number of his movies, with rebellious or outcast characters seen playing or talking about pinball in virtually every one. And in The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob once proclaimed that: "Television has ruined more young minds than pinball and syphilis combined."

CONTINUED: Six More Things You Didn't Know About Pinball