Fribble machine
abzorba
novel "The Adventures of Augie March" sometimes played them in Mexico
in the mid 1930s. They were in cafes and saloons in small towns. I
gather they might have been precursors of pinball machines, and
possibly you could gamble with them. Fribble means "trivial" but there
is no reference to "Fribble Machine" on Google, Wikipedia, or on-line
dictionaries.
Myles (Fribble Wizard - just don't sound the same...) Paulsen
R H Draney
>
>Anyone heard of a Fribble machine? The narrator of Saul Bellow's
>novel "The Adventures of Augie March" sometimes played them in Mexico
>in the mid 1930s. They were in cafes and saloons in small towns. I
>gather they might have been precursors of pinball machines, and
>possibly you could gamble with them. Fribble means "trivial" but there
>is no reference to "Fribble Machine" on Google, Wikipedia, or on-line
>dictionaries.
One of the last episodes of "The Monkees" had the boys looking for the alien
"freeble generator" that was putting earth viewers into a trance via
television...it turned out to be housed in the "frodis room"....r
--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
"free ball machine"?
Harlan Messinger
> Anyone heard of a Fribble machine? The narrator of Saul Bellow's
> novel "The Adventures of Augie March" sometimes played them in Mexico
> in the mid 1930s. They were in cafes and saloons in small towns. I
> gather they might have been precursors of pinball machines, and
> possibly you could gamble with them. Fribble means "trivial" but there
> is no reference to "Fribble Machine" on Google, Wikipedia, or on-line
> dictionaries.
Is this meant to have something to do with language?
Adam Funk
NTBCW the "frobnitz control panel".
--
By dint of plentiful try...catch constructs throughout our code base,
we are sometimes able to prevent our applications from aborting. We
think of the resultant state as "nailing the corpse in the upright
position". [Verity Stob]
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
It seems to be on-topic in alt.usage.english because the poster is
seeking the meaning of a word. It may be off-topic in sci.lang.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
António Marques
I'm not offended, so nobody's got reason to be.
R H Draney
>
>In message <f8e22253-5c67-4320...@o32g2000prb.googlegroups.com>
>> Anyone heard of a Fribble machine? The narrator of Saul Bellow's
>> novel "The Adventures of Augie March" sometimes played them in Mexico
>> in the mid 1930s. They were in cafes and saloons in small towns. I
>> gather they might have been precursors of pinball machines, and
>> possibly you could gamble with them. Fribble means "trivial" but there
>> is no reference to "Fribble Machine" on Google, Wikipedia, or on-line
>> dictionaries.
>
>of Keno board, but I have no idea why I thought that. That's what popped
>into my head when I read your post though.
Pinball, Keno...it's a mere bagatelle....r
Glenn Knickerbocker
Anyone who's been to a Friendly's restaurant has, but not the kind you'd
play on--it's Friendly's name for their extra-thick milkshakes.
> What makes you think they were pinball-like?
Maybe this sentence later in the same chapter:
I matched pesos with him, cut for high card, played fribble--which
was what he called pinball--and even put-and-take, with a little top.
http://judybiworker.blogspot.com/2007/10/xvi-xx.html
Pinball games of the 1930s were mostly simple games of chance scored by
which hole the ball dropped into. http://www.pinballhistory.com has
plenty of examples and explanations.
�R
R H Draney
>
>Pinball games of the 1930s were mostly simple games of chance scored by
>which hole the ball dropped into. http://www.pinballhistory.com has
>plenty of examples and explanations.
When I really got into pinball back in the 70s I was surprised at first to learn
that it was illegal in New York state, apparently because someone couldn't be
bothered to make a distinction between real pinball and the gambling machines
that involved no skill on the part of the player...it was pointed out that the
pinball table in Kelsey's Bar on "All in the Family" was a solecism because such
a thing wouldn't have been permitted in Queens....
(sci.lang trimmed because someone there has recently gone fussy about
crossposts)....r
Pierre Jelenc
>
> When I really got into pinball back in the 70s I was surprised at first to learn
> that it was illegal in New York state, apparently because someone couldn't be
> bothered to make a distinction between real pinball and the gambling machines
> that involved no skill on the part of the player...it was pointed out that the
> pinball table in Kelsey's Bar on "All in the Family" was a solecism because such
> a thing wouldn't have been permitted in Queens....
And that would have prevented a Queens bar owner from having one?
Pierre
--
Pierre Jelenc
The Gigometer www.gigometer.com
The NYC Beer Guide www.nycbeer.org
Skitt
I was into pinball machines in the early '50s. They were labeled "For
Amusement Only", but no one would play them if they didn't pay off.
Payoffs were illegal, of course, but they existed, and I made quite a
bit of spare change on them.
There was a considerable amount of skill involved in playing the
machines for profit, and payoffs were usually made only to customers who
were known to the proprietor. Unfortunately, there were a couple of
places that eventually informed me that I could play, but they would no
longer pay me. Naturally, I went somewhere else to play.
The machines I played were of the cards-with-numbers type. The playing
field had holes, numbered 1 through 25. The trick was to get the balls
(five of them) into holes that were in a row on a card on the display.
The minimum payoff was for three in a row, the maximum for five in a row.
There were other features, such as certain free numbers, increased
payoffs, extra balls, extra cards, "four corners", and such, all
possible, but not guaranteed for inserting extra money. The skill was
in jiggling the machine without activating the "Tilt" mechanism that
killed the game.
The minimum cost per game was 5 cents, and there was a possibility of
winning $15, but normally it would cost many additional coins to avail
oneself of that possibility.
Here's a picture of the type of machine I'm talking about:
http://www.icollector.com/images/271/14677/14677_0413_2_lg.jpg
--
Skitt (SF Bay Area)
http://come.to/skitt
Glenn Knickerbocker
> When I really got into pinball back in the 70s I was surprised at first to learn
> that it was illegal in New York state
Not the state, just the City. All our bowling alleys up here still had
pinball machines--though the ones with payouts were long gone by then,
and they had stickers plastered on them warning us against betting.
(Apparently Beacon also had an ordinance against it that was still on
the books and invoked in response to noise complaints against the new
Retro Arcade Museum last summer.)
�R
tony cooper
It was illegal in Indiana (when I was a teenager) for pinball machines
to pay out. It was not at all difficult, though, to find a place
where payouts were made. The machines recorded "free games", and you
could cash in on your "free games" in many places if you were at least
a semi-regular there.
Punch-card payouts were also illegal, but - again - it wasn't
difficult to find a place where payouts were made.
That type of thing wasn't an illegal activity that law enforcement
paid any attention to unless there were special circumstances. If a
bar was known to serve minors, or known for rowdiness, the local
police might crack down on payouts just as a form of harassment
because it was easy to send in someone to play and ask for a payout.
It was more difficult to send in a young cop to see if minors were
served.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Jerry Friedman
> Lewis filted:
>
>
>
> >In message <f8e22253-5c67-4320-ac3d-8f1860bb5...@o32g2000prb.googlegroups.com>
> > abzorba <myles...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> >> Anyone heard of a Fribble machine? The narrator of Saul Bellow's
> >> novel "The Adventures of Augie March" sometimes played them in Mexico
> >> in the mid 1930s. They were in cafes and saloons in small towns. I
> >> gather they might have been precursors of pinball machines, and
> >> possibly you could gamble with them. Fribble means "trivial" but there
> >> is no reference to "Fribble Machine" on Google, Wikipedia, or on-line
> >> dictionaries.
>
> >What makes you think they were pinball-like? I thought they were a sort
> >of Keno board, but I have no idea why I thought that. That's what popped
> >into my head when I read your post though.
>
> Pinball, Keno...it's a mere bagatelle....r
Pa-ching!
--
Jerry Friedman
John Varela
>
> I was into pinball machines in the early '50s. They were labeled "For
> Amusement Only", but no one would play them if they didn't pay off.
> Payoffs were illegal, of course, but they existed, and I made quite a
> bit of spare change on them.
In the 1940s, pinball machines were common in New Orleans. It was
illegal to pay off on them, but I recall a neighborhood drugstore
and a bar & grill that did. Everyplace else doubtless did as well,
but these were the only places within easy walking distance of home.
The pinball machines had flippers and were much like the present-day
ones. It cost 5 cents for five balls.
I was just a kid so usually lost at pinball, but the bar & grill
also had a racehorse machine that was clearly intended for gambling.
One time the machine developed a fault such that number One always
won. I was the only person playing the machine and I won about $5,
which was a fortune for a 7-year-old in 1943. All in nickels.
--
John Varela
Jerry Friedman
> Peter Duncanson (BrE) wrote (08-02-2011 13:42):
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 07:45:18 -0500, Harlan Messinger
>
> >> On 2/8/2011 3:14 AM, abzorba wrote:
> >>> Anyone heard of a Fribble machine? The narrator of Saul Bellow's
> >>> novel "The Adventures of Augie March" sometimes played them in Mexico
> >>> in the mid 1930s. They were in cafes and saloons in small towns. I
> >>> gather they might have been precursors of pinball machines, and
> >>> possibly you could gamble with them. Fribble means "trivial" but there
> >>> is no reference to "Fribble Machine" on Google, Wikipedia, or on-line
> >>> dictionaries.
>
> >> Is this meant to have something to do with language?
>
> > It seems to be on-topic in alt.usage.english because the poster is
> > seeking the meaning of a word. It may be off-topic in sci.lang.
>
> I'm not offended, so nobody's got reason to be.
Google counts:
"Nobody has reason": 515,000
"Nobody's got reason": 5
Maybe it's on topic in sci.lang to ask whether anyone has a reason for
this discrepancy.
--
Jerry Friedman thinks António's English is amazing anyway.
António Marques
Reason's one of those things that fortake _have_ instead of _have got_, but
I never got why.
> Jerry Friedman thinks António's English is amazing anyway.
Ro(t)fl
abzorba
Yeah, fribble machine is a term used by an author who won a Nobel
Prize for Literature, and I can't find the words anywhere but in that
one book. How could you perceive my question as being in some way NOT
associated with language? Where should I post it -
alt.macrame.patterns?
Myles (He's a fribble machine wizard) Paulsen
abzorba
> >What makes you think they were pinball-like? I thought they were a sort
> >of Keno board, but I have no idea why I thought that. That's what popped
> >into my head when I read your post though.
>
> Pinball, Keno...it's a mere bagatelle....r
>
Myles (pining for the pinnies) Paulsen
abzorba
> > What makes you think they were pinball-like?
>
> Maybe this sentence later in the same chapter:
>
> I matched pesos with him, cut for high card, played fribble--which
> was what he called pinball--and even put-and-take, with a little top.
>
> http://judybiworker.blogspot.com/2007/10/xvi-xx.html
>
> Pinball games of the 1930s were mostly simple games of chance scored by
> which hole the ball dropped into. http://www.pinballhistory.comhas
> plenty of examples and explanations.
>
maybe a free game. Hell, life after death, even. This is what this ng
is ALL about. I had "Adventures of Augie March" as a library book, and
gave it back after I made a note about the "fribble" reference. Now I
see I did not make that note comprehensive enough. It must have been
ONLY Augie's pal who called pinball machines games "fribbles", meaning
a general waste of time. That's why "fribble machine" doesn't appear
anywhere else.
Myles ("fribble" should be resurrected though - sounds exactly like
what it is) Paulsen
abzorba
> R H Draney wrote:
> > Glenn Knickerbocker filted:
> >> Pinball games of the 1930s were mostly simple games of chance scored by
> >> which hole the ball dropped into. http://www.pinballhistory.comhas
> >> plenty of examples and explanations.
>
> I was into pinball machines in the early '50s. They were labeled "For
> Amusement Only", but no one would play them if they didn't pay off.
> Payoffs were illegal, of course, but they existed, and I made quite a
> bit of spare change on them.
>
> There was a considerable amount of skill involved in playing the
> machines for profit, and payoffs were usually made only to customers who
> were known to the proprietor. Unfortunately, there were a couple of
> places that eventually informed me that I could play, but they would no
> longer pay me. Naturally, I went somewhere else to play.
>
> The machines I played were of the cards-with-numbers type. The playing
> field had holes, numbered 1 through 25. The trick was to get the balls
> (five of them) into holes that were in a row on a card on the display.
> The minimum payoff was for three in a row, the maximum for five in a row.
>
> There were other features, such as certain free numbers, increased
> payoffs, extra balls, extra cards, "four corners", and such, all
> possible, but not guaranteed for inserting extra money. The skill was
> in jiggling the machine without activating the "Tilt" mechanism that
> killed the game.
>
>
> Here's a picture of the type of machine I'm talking about:
>
> http://www.icollector.com/images/271/14677/14677_0413_2_lg.jpg
> --
in Sydney. I knew pinball machines well by that time, and couldn't
work out what these things were. They were obviously gambling
machines. Now that NSW has by far the largest number of poker machines
per capita in the world, there is no need for them. They had no
flippers of course, and the aim of the game is completely different to
pinball.
abzorba
- I don't think it was the Logic of Scientific Discovery" made
significant use of the early pinball machines as examples of what
Popper was trying to demonstrate in showing that it was impossible to
make a completely accurate description of the world, even
theoretically. It would be impossible to fine tune the initial
starting conditions of the ball so completely that one could guarantee
that, on release, it would hit the proper pins and go into the proper
holes all the way down, although through skill one could go at least
SOME way to doing that. As an analogy, it was a predecessor to what
everyone now knows as the Butterfly Effect.
Shortly after Popper wrote these analyses, he was thoroughly
vindicated when Chaos and fractal Theory came to maturity, and the
notion of total computablity was finally jettisoned for keeps.
Reading it at the time, I could not really picture what type of
machine Popper was talking about. Of course, the earliest of these
machines did not require electricity, and the pins were obstacles on
and around which the ball had to bounce until it reached the hole it
was meant to nestle in. A kind of mini-golf with obstacles.
Myles (pining for the right to put this in sci.lang) Paulsen
John Atkinson
> Jerry Friedman wrote (08-02-2011 22:51):
[...]
>>>
>>> I'm not offended, so nobody's got reason to be.
>>
>> Google counts:
>>
>> "Nobody has reason": 515,000
>>
>> "Nobody's got reason": 5
>>
>> Maybe it's on topic in sci.lang to ask whether anyone has a reason for
>> this discrepancy.
>
> Reason's one of those things that fortake _have_ instead of _have got_,
> but I never got why.
>
>> Jerry Friedman thinks António's English is amazing anyway.
No, it's weirder than that. "have got reason" and "'ve got reason"
produce the expected million or so ghits. But "has got reason" has only
72, and "'s got reason" has 14. "nobody's got reason" is up to 11 now,
about half of them from this thread.
>
> Ro(t)fl
>
Lanarcam
>
> I was into pinball machines in the early '50s. They were labeled "For
> Amusement Only", but no one would play them if they didn't pay off.
> Payoffs were illegal, of course, but they existed, and I made quite a
> bit of spare change on them.
>
why. We didn't play for money but only for fun.
Mark Brader
> I was into pinball machines in the early '50s. They were labeled "For
> The machines I played were of the cards-with-numbers type. The playing
> field had holes, numbered 1 through 25. The trick was to get the balls
> (five of them) into holes that were in a row on a card on the display.
> The minimum payoff was for three in a row, the maximum for five in a row.
That's a bingo pinball machine, and I read a couple of decades ago that
they were still illegal in most places, because of the gambling aspect.
I've never seen one, and I like to play pinball when I can still find it,
including when traveling.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "It was too crazy to be true,
m...@vex.net | and too crazy to be false." --Tom Clancy
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
>Skitt a �crit :
>>
>> I was into pinball machines in the early '50s. They were labeled "For
>> Amusement Only", but no one would play them if they didn't pay off.
>> Payoffs were illegal, of course, but they existed, and I made quite a
>> bit of spare change on them.
>>
>Over here, pinball machines were called "flippers", I have never known
>why.
Probably because of the manchine's flippers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_machine#Flippers
>We didn't play for money but only for fun.
--
Lanarcam
>>> I was into pinball machines in the early '50s. They were labeled "For
>>> Amusement Only", but no one would play them if they didn't pay off.
>>> Payoffs were illegal, of course, but they existed, and I made quite a
>>> bit of spare change on them.
>>>
>> Over here, pinball machines were called "flippers", I have never known
>> why.
>
> Probably because of the manchine's flippers:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_machine#Flippers
That's it exactly. From WP : "The flippers have loaned pinball its
common name in many languages, where the game is known mainly
as "flipper"."
Mystery solved, thanks.
David Hatunen
> When I really got into pinball back in the 70s I was surprised at first
> to learn that it was illegal in New York state, apparently because
> someone couldn't be bothered to make a distinction between real pinball
> and the gambling machines that involved no skill on the part of the
> player...
That gets a little tricky. many pinball machines, even the ones requiring
skill, award free games to high scores (which makes them non-gambling in
some jurisdictions), and some bars will pay off the extra games in cash,
under the table, so to speak, making it gambling (for various values of
"gambling").
--
Dave Hatunen, Tucson, Arizona, out where the cacti grow
Skitt
[about pinball machines I used to play]
> Here's a picture of the type of machine I'm talking about:
>
> http://www.icollector.com/images/271/14677/14677_0413_2_lg.jpg
I now found a picture of the top glass for the exact machine, well, one
of them, that I used to play.
http://photos.liveauctioneers.com/houses/morphyauctions/22957/0162_1_lg.jpg
Prai Jei
continuum:
That was probably the motive for adding flippers, so that there would be
some actual player skill involved.
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Prai Jei
continuum:
> Myles ("fribble" should be resurrected though - sounds exactly like
> what it is) Paulsen
Didn't they have trouble with fribbles in one of the Star Trek episodes?
Skitt
> R H Draney wrote:
>>> Pinball games of the 1930s were mostly simple games of chance scored by
>>> which hole the ball dropped into. http://www.pinballhistory.com has
>>> plenty of examples and explanations.
>>
>> When I really got into pinball back in the 70s I was surprised at first to
>> learn that it was illegal in New York state, apparently because someone
>> couldn't be bothered to make a distinction between real pinball and the
>> gambling machines that involved no skill on the part of the player...it
>> was pointed out that the pinball table in Kelsey's Bar on "All in the
>> Family" was a solecism because such a thing wouldn't have been permitted
>> in Queens....
>>
>> (sci.lang trimmed because someone there has recently gone fussy about
>> crossposts)....r
>
> That was probably the motive for adding flippers, so that there would be
> some actual player skill involved.
As I mentioned in another post in this thread, there was plenty of skill
involved in manipulating the flipper-less machines. Enough so, that I
was often asked by others to play their ball for a certain number for a
big pay-off, sharing in the profits when I made the shot, but with no
penalty if I missed. The chances of my success were pretty good, and
they knew it. For me, it was easy money.
Peter T. Daniels
> abzorba set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
> continuum:
>
> > Myles ("fribble" should be resurrected though - sounds exactly like
> > what it is) Paulsen
>
> Didn't they have trouble with fribbles in one of the Star Trek episodes?
No, that was frouble.
Why didn't he just write to Saul Bellow and ask him?
John Varela
<pvstownse...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> abzorba set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
> continuum:
>
> > Myles ("fribble" should be resurrected though - sounds exactly like
> > what it is) Paulsen
>
> Didn't they have trouble with fribbles in one of the Star Trek episodes?
Tribbles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribble
--
John Varela
Garrett Wollman
abzorba <myle...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>Myles ("fribble" should be resurrected though - sounds exactly like
>what it is) Paulsen
I'm not sure why an Australian would associate anything with an
ice-cream dessert served by a small restaurant chain in the
northeastern U.S., but OK.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Glenn Knickerbocker
>Why didn't he just write to Saul Bellow and ask him?
Maybe you missed the obituary a few years back.
WHOOPS! GUESS SOMEONE'S GONNA HAVE TO CLEAN THAT UP! MAYBE NEXT TIME
ŹR >--> THE GUY SHOULD TRY A LITTLE HARDER NOT TO HIT PEOPLE WITH
http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/davidcar.html >--> HIS CAR! --Jake