Exhibit

Exhibit Supply Company (ESCO) was a Chicago coin-machine manufacturer that began in 1901 as a printer of penny-arcade "exhibit cards" — photo cards of ballplayers, boxers and movie stars sold through its own vending machines — under J. Frank Meyer, who joined the firm in 1907 and controlled it by 1910. Exhibit added pinball to its arcade line in the mid-1930s: Drop Kick (1934), the payout baseball game Play Ball (1935), whose playfield lights tracked runners around the bases, and Trapper (1936), whose spring-loaded mechanical traps dropped animal-shaped targets when struck. Lightning (1938) ran seven electromagnets beneath the playfield, the work of Harry Williams and Lyn Durant — two ex-Bally engineers who left in 1942 to start companies of their own.