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description

Rube Gross & Company was a short-lived pinball manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington, active from 1934 to 1935. The firm produced at least three known games during its brief existence, working across both the [[technology-generation:pure-mechanical]] and [[technology-generation:electromechanical]] technologies that coexisted in pinball's earliest years. The company's first known game, *[[title:torpedo-5]]* (1934), was an electromechanical table with a military-nautical theme featuring trap holes, free play holes, and kickers — including a bottom-of-playfield kicker that repeatedly returned balls to play until they landed in a score hole. The following month brought *[[title:the-mystery-six]]* (1934), a pure mechanical game advertised as requiring no batteries, with a "mystery" ball-advance system that the company promoted with sixty-day location test results. The company's final known title, *[[title:fury]]* (1935), returned to electromechanical design. Like fellow Seattle manufacturer [[manufacturer:shyvers]], Rube Gross & Company was one of the small Pacific Northwest firms that emerged during pinball's explosive early growth in the 1930s. The company ceased production by 1935, leaving behind a tiny but documented catalog that illustrates the geographic breadth of the Depression-era pinball industry, which briefly supported manufacturers far from the Chicago hub that would soon dominate the business.

Seed import (backfilled).

name

Rube Gross & Company

slug

rube-gross-company