This was my attempt to make an updated version of a 1938 payout pinball (illegal after WWII).

Seems the 1938 machine only incrementally stepped the reels one symbol at a time whereas mine steps and spins.

1930s machine here:
http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=1719&picno=47200.

My project was modified from this 1948 original model:
http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=2800&picno=17972.

Nice one but a video is warranted!

Hard to imagine a pinball machine without flippers -- nothing to do but watch (or shake the machine).

I saw one in a 1940 movie recently. ("They Drive By Night"):

http://33.media.tumblr.com/bbcbf6db34045c7df4185ee1eb7ee0bf/tumblr_inline_ni6awp8w981t7aqip.png


PS: "Pokies" are the one-armed bandits here, and these days of course they have no 'arms':

http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2011/04/11/1226037/410827-poker-machines.jpg

One turned up in a fairly recent episode of Pawn Stars, I think it was Bally.
It’s on Monday night around the other restoration and picker shows.

The coolest thing like this I remember as a kid was a wooden contraption mounted on a wall
that you look into through glass. The idea was to put your coin in the top,
and it had a lot of diagonal lines the coin would roll down to a pit at the next lower level.
each pit was enough to stop the coin, so that you had to hit it with some mechanism
it to get it rolling down each diagonal line.

The trick was there were a bunch of coin sized holes at the back of the whole thing that
the coin could fall through in it’s way down each diagonal line.
The idea was to get the same coin back out of the bottom of the machine.
I still like the idea that it was your own coin you were playing with.