Cannon Ball

The Cannon Ball, manufactured by Earl & Koehler Manufacturing Company of Portland, Oregon in February 1934, holds a genuinely significant place in pinball history: according to the Encyclopedia of Pinball, it was the first game to feature a kicker, an innovation credited to Frank Koehler. This electro-mechanical (EM) machine predates the more familiar pinball designs of the 1940s and 1950s by over a decade.

The Cannon Ball's playfield included two kickers, a new mechanism at the time designed to actively deflect the ball back into play. The invention proved influential and contentious: Ken Shyvers soon negotiated rights to the design, added two more kickers, and released it as Cannon Fire through his own Shyvers Coin Automatic Machine Company. As imitators appeared, both Koehler and Shyvers filed competing patents on the same day in October 1935 — Koehler's patent 2,070,948 was finally granted in February 1937, by which point pinball technology had already moved past both games.

Details of the Cannon Ball's exact rules and playfield layout beyond the kicker mechanism are not well documented, but its role in originating a device that became a pinball staple secures its place as an important, if under-recognized, machine in the medium's early development.