- gameplay_feature
- Kickers ×2
- ipdb.corporate_entity_name
- Earl & Koehler Manufacturing Company
- ipdb_id
- 6062
- ipdb.notable_features
- Kickers (2).
Patent 2,070,948 [MARBLE GAME APPARATUS] filed October 12, 1935. Granted February 16, 1937 to Frank Koehler.
- ipdb.notes
- This is the first game with a kicker, invented by Frank Koehler. According to the Encyclopedia of Pinball Vol 2, this game had two kickers on the playfield when Koehler applied for a patent in August 1934, although no details about the disposition of this patent request are given. Ken Shyvers soon negotiated for the rights to this game, added two more kickers to the playfield, and manufactured it as Shyvers Coin Automatic Machine Company's 1934 'Cannon Fire'. When imitations showed up from competitors. Shyvers vigorously pursued protecting his rights. For that reason, on October 12, 1935, Kohler filed patent 2,070,948 and Shyvers filed patent 2,087,799 the same day. The two patents have identical drawings but non-identical text.
By the time the first of the two patents, Koehler's, was approved in February 1937, pinball technology had evolved to render both Cannon Ball and Cannon Fire no longer viable, and Shyvers sold forty percent of his rights to Mr. B.P. Higby of Peoria, Illinois, a collector of patent rights. Due to the legal confusion surrounding ownership, the U.S. Patent Office issued a clarifying report in early 1937 that stated the kicker had a patent Application of August 1934 with a Reapplication in October 12, 1935, and was invented and patented by Frank Koehler of Portland, Oregon and assigned to Ken C. Shyvers of Chicago, Ill.
- month
- 2
- player_count
- 1
- technology_generation
- electromechanical
- year
- 1934