Futurity

Futurity, manufactured by the Western Equipment & Supply Company of Chicago in May 1934, is not actually a pinball machine at all - it is a tabletop counter game and payout machine with a horse racing theme, listed in the Internet Pinball Database for clarification purposes. Western Equipment & Supply operated only briefly, from 1934 to 1938, and Futurity dates from the company's very first year.

The machine was compact by design: advertised at 13 inches high, 14 inches wide, and 13 inches deep, and weighing 45 pounds, it could be set on a counter or mounted on a slot stand. This flexibility suited the taverns, cigar stores, and other small venues where counter games of the era typically earned their keep.

As a payout machine, Futurity belongs to the gambling side of the 1930s coin-op trade rather than to pinball proper. It shares its horse racing theme and its name with later, unrelated machines - a reminder of how popular racing themes were across every category of coin-operated equipment in that decade.