- ipdb.corporate_entity_name
- Culp Products Company
- ipdb_id
- 6749
- ipdb.image_urls
- ["https://www.ipdb.org/images/6749/image-1.png"]
- ipdb.notable_features
- Cabinet advertised as 36 inches long, 26 inches wide, 36 inches high in the front, and 38 inches high in the back.
- ipdb.notes
- In the Billboard article from 1940 (shown here), the manufacturer indicated that the game was being location-tested and would soon begin production. The brief description of game play befits the playfield as being a bowl, not a flat game board.
Other than that one article, we have found no further reference during the 1940s for 'Bridgeball' or mentioning Culp until a brief mention in The Billboard, Dec-31-1949, page 86, indicating Mr. Culp was due to arrive in Chicago any day "with several revolutionary ideas for the novelty game business." With no other information, all we can say is that some test games were made in 1940 and were measured to advertise their cabinet dimensions.
Culp introduced in 1950 a version of this game having a shorter 30-inch cabinet length, Culp Products Company's 1950 'Bridgeball (short cabinet bowl model)'. It was advertised as their entry into the coin-machine field, but that doesn't have to mean that this 1940 game was coinless, given the time gap involved.
We don't know if this 1940 version was coinless as we have no pictures of it. In our Files Section is a 1936 patent for a coinless game with a bowl designed differently from the 1950 model. It may be this 1940 game.
Patent 2,035,638 [GAME DEVICE] filed February 6, 1935. Granted March 31, 1936 to J.W. Culp.
See also J. F. Frantz's 1949 'Bridgeball'.
- month
- 8
- player_count
- 1
- technology_generation
- pure-mechanical
- year
- 1940