United Manufacturing Co.

United Manufacturing Co. was founded in Chicago in 1941 by designers Harry E. Williams and Lyndon "Lyn" Durant, who had worked together at Exhibit Supply before striking out on their own to refurbish coin-operated machines and pursue wartime manufacturing contracts. Williams left the company in 1942, selling his share back to Durant, and the following year founded the separate Williams Manufacturing Company. Durant kept United running and built it into one of Chicago's major electromechanical game makers of the postwar era.

Under Durant, United became known for shuffle alleys and bowling games alongside a run of pinball and baseball tables. In 1949 the company released Shuffle Alley, a puck-bowling game that sold more than 10,000 units and helped establish shuffle-alley bowling as its own category of coin-op amusement. Its early pinball lineup — titles such as Serenade, Wisconsin and Star Dust — dates mostly from 1948 to 1950, and its 1956 baseball table Star Slugger added selectable bat speeds and multiple home-run scoring decks, built around a "running man" unit that Williams, still on good terms with his old partner, let United use.

United continued producing bowling, baseball and other electromechanical amusement machines into the early 1960s. In June 1964 the Seeburg Corporation acquired Williams Manufacturing as a subsidiary, and that September it purchased United's assets as well, folding the company into the Williams division and ending production under the United name.