Cannon Fire

Cannon Fire, produced by the Shyvers Coin Automatic Machine Company of Seattle in July 1934, is an early electro-mechanical game from the first years of powered pinball. Its central novelty, the kicker, actually debuted on Earl & Koehler Mfg. Co.'s 1934 'Cannon Ball,' invented by Frank Koehler; Ken Shyvers negotiated with Koehler for the rights to produce that game as his own Cannon Fire, and vigorously defended those rights when imitations appeared from competitors.

At play, Cannon Fire offers 32 trap holes and two kickers, a combination that made each shot both challenging and rewarding for its time. A countertop-scaled companion, 'Cannon Fire Jr.,' was produced the same year, and the design was also licensed to the Mills Novelty Company.

The game's legal history is as interesting as its gameplay. On October 12, 1935, Koehler filed patent 2,070,948 and Shyvers filed patent 2,087,799 for the 'Marble Game Apparatus' on the very same day — two patents with identical drawings but different text, a byproduct of their effort to lock down the kicker. By the time the patents were granted in 1937, pinball technology had moved on and both Cannon Ball and Cannon Fire were commercially obsolete, but the episode remains a vivid snapshot of the scramble to protect innovations in pinball's earliest boom years.