Greyhound

Greyhound, released by Bally Manufacturing Corporation in May 1932, comes from the very first year of Bally's existence and the earliest days of the pin game industry. It is a pure mechanical machine — no electricity at all — built as a tabletop counter game, model number 37, designed to sit on a shop or tavern counter and earn its keep a coin at a time.

As a pure mechanical game from 1932, Greyhound predates nearly everything we associate with modern pinball: there were no flippers (which wouldn't appear until 1947), no electric scoring, and no lit backglass. Play in games of this type consisted of shooting balls onto the small playfield and letting gravity and nailed-in pins decide where they came to rest.

Surviving documentation on Greyhound is thin — IPDB records no designer, production figures, or feature list — but as an artifact from the industry's founding moment, when Bally itself was brand new, it holds genuine historical interest for collectors of countertop games from the Depression era.