Arlington Park

Arlington Park, manufactured by Specialty Manufacturing Company of Chicago in June 1941, is a single-player electro-mechanical pinball machine with a confirmed production run of 1,200 units.

As a 1941 EM machine, Arlington Park predates the flipper, which would not be introduced until 1947; gameplay instead relied on the initial plunge, gravity, and skillful nudging of the cabinet to direct the ball toward scoring targets. Its confirmed production figure of 1,200 units is unusually well documented for a machine from this era, giving collectors a rare degree of certainty about its rarity.

Specific details about Arlington Park's designer, artwork, or theme are not well documented. While it is an interesting example of early-1940s EM design, it is far from the oldest pinball machine in existence - Specialty Manufacturing Company itself dated back to 1932, and pinball as a coin-operated amusement predates Arlington Park by roughly a decade.