A. B. T. Manufacturing Company was established by Gus Adler, Archie Bechtol and Walter Tratsch in 1920 and was based in Chicago, Illinois. Each one took the first initial of their last name to create the A. B. T. Manufacturing Co. The company made wonderful pinball games, arcade games, trade stimulators and scales. My favorite machine A. B. T. ever produced is the ultra-rare 1935 All Stars pinball, the playfield actually had two entire three-dimensional manikin football teams and the game was interactive. However, perhaps A. B. T. Mfg. made its biggest mark on the industry through the introduction of an early coin chute, which required a coin to travel down a ramp before activating a machine and therefore made slugging much more difficult. In 1925, A. B. T. Mfg. debuted one of the most important coin-operated machines of the 1920s, a countertop pistol game called Target Skill. Like earlier gun trade stimulators, Target Skill featured a glass-protected target area housed within a wooden cabinet, but unlike these earlier machines, the game provided five small steel balls as ammunition for the cost of a penny. The objective was to shoot these balls into five target holes of decreasing size, with each direct hit causing a flag to drop over the target. Unlike slot machines, there was no payout mechanism attached to the machine, making it a pure game of skill free of the legal challenges and confiscation hassles afflicting most countertop devices. A huge success, Target Skill games were soon being produced at a rate of 2,000 a month as sales reached 40,000 units within a decade. Once the popularity of the game was well established, A.B.T Mfg. began releasing variants that featured different playfield configurations and different payout elements. A.B.T. continued to sell variations on Target Skill until the early 1960s and manufactured over 300,000 of them during that time. Target Skill represented one of the first attempts to move coin-operated products from novelties and gambling concepts to actual games, paving the way for a major paradigm shift in an arcade industry that had remained stagnant for nearly two decades.
A. B. T. Manufacturing Company released 90 machines. (1920 - 1950) - Below are some examples from The Torrence Collection.
1928 A.B.T. MFG. CO. "THE CHURCHILL" BILLIARD TABLE
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Extremely rare and never in this caliber of condition. Plays on a nickel. Churchill Hide-A-Way Pocket miniature Billiard Table with original pool balls, rack, four sticks and scoring beads. Just had the felt redone, it is absolutely gorgeous and plays true.
1935 A.B.T. MFG. CO. ALL STARS
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Only known example. All the men are manikin three-dimensional football players. The goal is to land the ball in position in front of the red kick-off man. Then the ball can be shot into the touchdown hole at the top of the playfield. This causes a bell to ring, and the first ball is kicked up the field to the goal posts. Balls falling into the touchdown hole and the "out of bounds" holes are returned for free play. Rarest of the rare!
