Across the Board

Across the Board, manufactured by Universal Industries in December 1951, is a horse racing themed one-ball game from the final years of that gambling-adjacent genre. Universal Industries was a Chicago subsidiary of United Manufacturing Company, and in a December 1951 Billboard article United referred to this game as 'Universal's Across The Board' and described it as a 'jumbo pin game' - a multiple-coin game that awarded replays. Notably, there is no mention of flippers in the trade press coverage.

Gameplay followed the one-ball format: a single ball per play, with players hoping to land it in a scoring position tied to the horse racing theme, as depicted on the game's Operator Adjustments Sheet. A distributor ad in Billboard from February 1952 confirms the game's classification as a One Ball.

Across the Board is something of a mystery machine: no images of it are known to survive, so its artwork and playfield layout remain undocumented. Trade press accounts add some period color - an article dated December 23, 1951 noted that United's 500 employees paused volume production of the game for a Christmas party before resuming on December 26. Its obscurity makes it an intriguing research subject for historians of the one-ball era.