Daval Manufacturing Co.

Daval Manufacturing Co. was a Chicago-based producer of pinball machines and coin-operated trade stimulators during the mid-to-late 1930s. The company entered the pin game market in 1934 — slightly later than many of its Chicago contemporaries — and produced a concentrated burst of fifty-six titles over approximately five years before ceasing production around 1939.

Daval’s catalog consisted primarily of Electromechanical machines, with designers Matt Schu and Ralph Fletcher contributing to a body of work that included titles like Blue Streak (1934) and American Beauty (1934). The company also produced a line of trade stimulators and counter games that reflected the broader diversification common among Chicago amusement firms of the era — manufacturers rarely limited themselves to a single product category when operators were hungry for anything that could earn a nickel.

Daval’s relatively short production window coincided with one of pinball’s most fertile periods of mechanical innovation, as the industry moved from simple gravity-fed designs toward the bumper-equipped, electrically scored machines that would define the medium. The company did not survive to see the introduction of Flippers in 1947 or the postwar boom that rewarded the manufacturers who had weathered the intervening years, but its compact catalog preserves a snapshot of Chicago’s amusement industry at a moment of rapid creative and technical evolution.