Classic

The Bally 'Classic' from July 1937 is an early electro-mechanical payout machine from the formative years of the genre. A flipperless one-ball game offering one ball for five cents, it gave players 23 scoring bumpers to aim for plus a distinctive spinning bumper -- advertised as a 'whirling bumper' -- the bottom-most red bumper on the playfield, a mechanism later covered by a 1940 patent granted to Nels A. Nelson and assigned to Bally's Raymond T. Moloney.

The Classic boasted a steel playfield, a projection score display, and electronic tubes housed in the main cabinet -- ambitious engineering for its time. The game was advertised as 54 inches long by 26 inches wide, and its theme mixed auto racing and horse racing: the Billboard ad shows horses on the backglass while the flyer shows cars, and examples of both versions are known. A ticket model was also available.

As a payout machine from the pre-flipper era, the Classic offers a glimpse into the industry's earliest days, when manufacturers were experimenting with electric scoring features and novel bumper mechanisms.