1776

"1776" is a one-of-a-kind, single-player electro-mechanical pinball machine converted in 1948 from a Chicago Coin 1941 game called "Show Boat." It was not manufactured as a new design — instead, its original backglass artwork was altered to remove Show Boat's A-B-C-D feature and rework the theme around American Revolutionary War history, giving the game its "1776" name.

The conversion was built as a prop for the 1948 motion picture "The Time of Your Life," in which a character named Willy the Pinball Machine Maniac plays the machine on screen. Its gameplay retains the base game's 15 passive bumpers, but adds a theatrical flourish: reaching a winning score triggers a motor that lowers the main backglass into the cabinet, revealing a second backglass beneath it, complete with flashing lights and American flags that extend from the top and sides of the backbox, accompanied by sound effects.

Only one unit is known to exist, and it resurfaced decades later in a Burbank, California antique store in 2004. As a rare surviving movie prop rather than a mass-produced commercial machine, "1776" is a unique curiosity that bridges pinball history and classic Hollywood filmmaking.