Old Jenny (Whiffle)

Old Jenny (Whiffle), built in January 1931 by the newly formed Yohio Manufacturing Company of Youngstown, Ohio, was the first commercial game to follow 1930's prototype 'Whiffle Game.' According to Bueschel's Pinball 1, carpenter Arthur L. Paulin built the original prototype, and salesman Earl Froom refined it into a sellable coin-op: adding a playfield glass, a coin chute, a system of scoring holes with an underlying shuttle (baffle) to trap balls, a front knob to release the trapped balls between games, and a ball-lift knob letting the player serve balls into play. Only 10 units were made in about 30 days — the first with a handmade coin chute, the remaining nine with a Monarch/A.B.T. coin chute.

As a Pure Mechanical (PM) game, Old Jenny's center playfield shuttle, operated by a rod pulled and pushed back by the player, and its ball-lift mechanism for serving balls into play were its defining features, adding mechanical novelty well before flippers existed (they weren't introduced until 1947).

Old Jenny's extremely small production run — just 10 confirmed units — and its role as a direct stepping stone toward Automatic Industries' later hit 'Whiffle Board' make it a landmark, if exceedingly rare, artifact in the earliest days of the coin-operated pinball industry.