Attention

Attention is a single-player electro-mechanical game released in November 1940 by the Exhibit Supply Company (ESCO) of Chicago, a prolific coin-op manufacturer that operated from 1932 to 1957. It arrived near the end of the prewar pinball boom, shortly before America's entry into World War II curtailed game production industry-wide.

Little documentation of Attention's playfield, rules, or artwork survives in the available record. As a 1940 game it predates the flipper (introduced in 1947), so play would have centered on the plunger shot, scoring contacts, and skillful nudging rather than active ball control.

For historians, machines like Attention are useful data points in tracing ESCO's output and the state of electro-mechanical design just before the war, even if the specifics of this particular title remain largely a mystery.