Military finds use for banned pinball machines

“North Carolina newspapers recently carried stories about pinball machines helping win the war…. The Army Air Force Training Command discovered that the electrical switches, relays and complicated circuits in the machines are of value in testing the mechanical aptitude of trainees.

“With manufacture having been banned for the duration, such equipment proved difficult to obtain until confiscated pinball machines were rounded up and sent to Atlantic City and Greensboro basic training centers. Both cities have license laws, and evidently the machines in the hands of law enforcement had been seized for violations.”

— From Billboard magazine, March 27, 1943