Evans

H. C. Evans & Company was a long-lived Chicago manufacturer of coin-operated amusement machines whose involvement with pinball-adjacent games spans from the late 1920s through the early 1950s. Founded by Horace C. Evans, the company was best known for its horse-racing games, dice machines, and other gambling-flavored amusements — products that sat at the contested boundary between skill games and games of chance during an era when that distinction carried serious legal consequences.

Evans’ catalog of sixteen titles is entirely Electromechanical, beginning with Electric Poker (1929) — one of the earliest electrically powered coin-operated games of any kind — and extending through postwar entries like Bat-A-Score (1948) and Saddle & Turf (1953). The company’s machines tended toward novelty and sporting themes rather than conventional pinball layouts, reflecting Evans’ roots in the broader coin-op amusement trade rather than the pin game business specifically.

Evans’ long arc — from the pre-pinball era of the late 1920s through the postwar boom — makes the company an unusual bridge between the earliest days of electrically powered amusements and the mature coin-op industry of the 1950s. The firm’s specialty in racing and gambling-themed machines placed it at the margins of the pinball world proper, but its sustained presence in Chicago’s amusement manufacturing district and its early adoption of electrical technology mark it as a noteworthy contributor to the broader ecosystem from which pinball emerged.