Whiffle Board

The Whiffle Board, manufactured by Automatic Industries, Incorporated of Youngstown, Ohio, beginning in June 1931, is widely regarded as the game most closely associated with the birth of modern coin-operated pinball. Concept work came from Arthur L. Paulin, whose bagatelle-style design was turned into a practical coin-operated machine by designer Earl Froom, who solved the key problems of separating players from the playfield with glass, recirculating balls via a baffle/shuttle and ball elevator, and collecting money through a coin mechanism.

As a pure mechanical (PM) machine, Whiffle Board uses no electrical components. Play involves ten agate marbles -- nine white and one red, with the red counting double -- guided across a glass-covered playfield. The game proved wildly popular: Froom is quoted as saying, "We built 27,000 Whiffle games the first year," a success that triggered a wave of imitators and helped touch off the pinball patent wars of the 1930s. That popularity was ultimately eclipsed by the enormous success of Bally's 1932 'Ballyhoo,' of which roughly 50,000 units were built, which Froom later lamented made his own game obsolete almost overnight.

While Whiffle Board is often called the first pinball machine, IPDB notes that the Encyclopedia of Pinball traces true pinball origins further back, to Charles P. Young's 1892 'Coin Game Board' trade stimulator. Still, Whiffle Board's design and commercial success mark it as a pivotal machine in pinball's transition from novelty bagatelle to true coin-operated amusement.