Rock-ola Manufacturing Corporation

Rock-ola Manufacturing Corporation is best remembered today as one of the great American jukebox manufacturers, but the company was also a significant early producer of pinball machines. Founded by David Rockola — a Canadian-born entrepreneur whose surname, through a twist of industrial history, became synonymous with rock and roll music — Rock-ola entered the pin game market in 1932 and produced over fifty titles before shifting its focus to other amusement categories by the late 1930s.

Rock-ola’s pinball catalog spans the industry’s formative years, beginning with Pure Mechanical games like Juggle Ball and Ballyhoo (both 1932) and progressing through the rapid adoption of electric scoring and solenoid-driven features that transformed the medium during the mid-1930s. The company’s Electromechanical machines competed for operator placements alongside those of Gottlieb, Genco, Keeney, and the other Chicago firms that dominated the early industry.

By the late 1930s, Rock-ola had largely moved on from pinball to concentrate on jukeboxes and other coin-operated amusements, where the company would achieve its lasting fame. David Rockola’s firm survived well into the postwar decades as a major force in the jukebox business — a trajectory that makes the company’s early pinball work an interesting footnote in a larger industrial story, and a reminder of how many of Chicago’s amusement manufacturers moved fluidly between product categories during the industry’s pioneering era.