Baby Grand (Roulette)

The Baby Grand (Roulette) pinball machine, manufactured by A. M. Walzer Company in 1932, is an early artifact from pinball's pre-flipper era. As a Pure Mechanical (PM) machine, it predates by more than a decade the flippers and electrified scoring that would come to define the game.

Baby Grand (Roulette) is built as a "square machine": unlike most contemporaries, its playfield has no pins at all, only scoring pockets that the ball can fall into as it moves across the field under gravity and the tilt of the cabinet. The machine measured a compact 24 1/2 inches square and 36 1/4 inches high. A. M. Walzer also released a companion machine the same year, the 'Baby Grand (Pin Game),' which used a similar playfield layout but combined both pins and pockets.

Little else is documented about the machine's specific design, art, or theme. As an example of pure mechanical pinball from the format's earliest commercial years, it offers a glimpse into the game before pins, flippers, or electrification became standard.