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Ever since I was a young boy I’ve played the silver ball From Soho down to Brighton I must have played them all But I ain’t seen nothing like him In any amusement hall That deaf dumb and blind kid Sure plays a mean pinball!

— from “Pinball Wizard,” 1969

W hen the Who recorded “Pinball Wizard,” a song about Tommy, the deaf, dumb and blind boy who couldn’t be beat at the arcade, there was no such thing as a “video game.” In the early 1970s, there were a few pinball machine tournaments, but these WORDS TO UNDERSTAND monopoly  a situation in which one company controls the production or sale of a single product or service pilot  in TV terms, a sample show produced to see if it would be popular enough to create a whole season’s worth surreal  bizarre, very unusual syndication  the secondary sales of a TV show after it has been broadcast by its original network

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