Derby Clock

The Derby Clock, manufactured by Western Products, Incorporated in January 1939, is an electro-mechanical one-ball horserace game from the late 1930s. One-ball games of this type gave the player a single ball per coin, with the outcome determining the result of a simulated horse race, a formula that made horserace games one of the most popular (and gambling-adjacent) categories of the pre-war coin machine business.

As a flipperless game of the pre-flipper era, the Derby Clock relied on the launch of the ball and the layout of the playfield rather than player-controlled flippers, which would not appear in the industry until 1947. Detailed information about its playfield features and artwork has not survived in the available records.

Western Products itself was a short-lived manufacturer, operating only from 1938 to 1941, and the Derby Clock stands as one of its horse racing titles from that brief run, a small artifact of the one-ball horserace craze that swept coin-op amusements at the close of the 1930s.