A.B.T. Manufacturing Company

A.B.T. Manufacturing Company was a Chicago-based producer of coin-operated amusement machines that entered the pinball business at its very inception, producing games from 1931 through the mid-1930s. The company’s catalog of thirty-nine titles is weighted heavily toward the Pure Mechanical countertop games that defined the industry’s earliest months, making A.B.T. one of the best representatives of pinball’s pre-electric origins.

A.B.T.'s early output included games like Billiard Practice and Dutch Pool (both 1931) — small, mechanically simple devices that owed more to the bagatelle parlor tradition than to the electrically powered machines that would soon transform the industry. Designer Thomas S. Hutchison contributed to a catalog that bridged the transition from Pure Mechanical to Electromechanical designs as the company adopted electric scoring and solenoid-driven features in its later games.

A.B.T. exited the pinball market by 1936, as the industry’s rapid evolution favored larger manufacturers with the capital to invest in increasingly sophisticated electrical and mechanical systems. The company’s compact catalog preserves an unusually clear picture of pinball’s earliest commercial form — the simple, inexpensive countertop game that launched a billion-dollar industry from Depression-era Chicago drugstores and candy shops.