Flipper

Manufactured in May 1932 by the Smith Manufacturing Company of Tampa, Florida, Flipper is an early pure-mechanical, single-player table-top or counter-top pinball game, predating the coin-operated pinball boom of the mid-to-late 1930s.

Despite its name, Flipper does not use the flipper mechanism that would later define modern pinball -- that innovation, using electrically operated flippers, wouldn't arrive until Gottlieb's 'Humpty Dumpty' in 1947. Instead, the game's key feature is a manual bat that players operate directly to influence the ball's path around the playfield, closer to bagatelle-style play than to modern flipper pinball.

Little else is documented about Flipper's rules, artwork, or original popularity, but as a rare pure-mechanical table game from the very early 1930s, it offers an interesting window into pinball's pre-electromechanical roots, well before flippers, tilt mechanisms, and the arcade-style cabinets of later decades became standard.