Straight Eight

The Straight Eight, manufactured by Chicago Coin Machine Manufacturing Company and dated March 10, 1936, is a single-player, electro-mechanical payout pinball machine from the early years of coin-operated pinball. Like other games of its era, it predates the invention of the player-controlled flipper by more than a decade, relying instead on the layout of the playfield, gravity, and any tilt mechanics to determine where the ball landed.

As a payout machine, Straight Eight would have paid out cash or tokens to players based on where the ball came to rest, with its electro-mechanical components -- typical of the mid-1930s -- handling scoring and payout functions.

Unfortunately, little specific documentation survives about Straight Eight's designer, artwork, or exact gameplay rules. Its name may echo the "straight-eight" engines popular in automobiles of the era, though this cannot be confirmed. It remains an intriguing but sparsely documented piece of 1930s payout-machine history.