Han-Ball

Han-Ball is a single-player electro-mechanical pinball machine produced by Hannahs Manufacturing Company in May 1937. The company's name lives on in the punning title, but Hannahs itself appears to have been active only briefly — 1937 — making Han-Ball a genuine obscurity among Depression-era games.

As a 1937 game, Han-Ball predates the invention of the flipper by a decade; play in this era revolved around the plunger shot, nudging, and the arrangement of scoring features on the playfield, with electricity used for scoring or other powered effects. No details of its specific features, theme, or designer have been documented.

For enthusiasts of early pinball, Han-Ball is interesting precisely because of its obscurity: it represents the many small, short-lived manufacturers who crowded into the booming coin-machine trade of the 1930s and vanished just as quickly.