Pinball Then … and Now | LifeZettehttp://www.lifezette.com/popzette/pinball-then-and-now/We all have our favorite pinball machine, and it’s easy to remember dumping dozens of quarters into it as adolescents to set a new high score. What most of us don’t know is that the classic pinball machine, the one we know and love, is a design that evolved over hundreds of years. Strangely enough, in an age where we’re digitizing everything, the pinball machine is still seeing an evolution — and a boost in competitive events. While the general aesthetic of the table game hasn’t changed significantly, it’s still as popular as ever. Regardless of whether you’re rocking out with KISS, exploring deep space with “Star Trek” or creeping into the unknown with “The Twilight Zone,” the pinball machine basics remains the same: A plunger to fire the ball into play, bumpers that create interesting ricochets and buttons on each side to control at least two flippers. In fact, the flippers were one of the last innovations added to the machine, introduced in 1947 to add a “skill factor” to the game because pinball machines had been outlawed in many big cities, labeled as gambling machines. By the 1970s, technology had advanced enough to finally reach pinball when electronics were introduced. Circuit boards allowed digital displays to show high scores, and pinball saw the addition of more advanced rules and objectives. Some tables even allowed for speech, another result of going electronic. In the 1980s pinball faced off against video games — and lost. The Nintendo Entertainment System not only started the decline of pinball