Quick Silver

Quick Silver, manufactured by J. H. Keeney and Company in January 1935 and designed by Harry Williams, holds a genuinely significant place in pinball history: it was the first game from any manufacturer to include the Free Game feature. The mechanism was invented by Bill Bellah, a 17-year-old janitor at Harry Williams' Automatic Amusements Company in Los Angeles, and licensed to Keeney by Bellah's family; it let a player start a new game by pushing in the coin slide without inserting a coin, eliminating the need to redeem a qualifying score for a free replay from the location attendant. Bellah patented the mechanism (U.S. Patent No. 1,985,736), filed in October 1934 and granted that December.

As a single-player, 5-cent-play machine advertised at 20 by 40 inches, Quick Silver's own gameplay was otherwise simple by later standards -- this was years before flippers were introduced to pinball, so the ball's path was governed entirely by the tilt and layout of the playfield rather than player-controlled paddles.

Beyond its dimensions and the Free Game innovation, little else is documented about Quick Silver's design or artwork. Its lasting importance comes not from rarity claims but from its concrete role as the debut vehicle for a feature that would go on to shape how pinball machines awarded replays for decades.