English

The English pinball machine, manufactured by Mills Novelty Company of Chicago in February 1932, holds a place in the earliest chapter of pinball history. Dating from just after the games that launched the coin-operated pinball boom, it is a purely mechanical (PM) machine, built before electricity entered pinball design, reflecting an era when playability and durability were paramount.

English is a rolldown game offering five balls for five cents, standard economics for the countertop marble games of the early 1930s. With no electrical components at all, gameplay relied entirely on gravity, the plunger, and the arrangement of pins and scoring pockets.

Little information is available about the machine's designer, theme, or artwork. Still, as an early Mills Novelty product from pinball's formative years, English offers a fascinating contrast to the increasingly complex machines that followed in later decades.