Ray's Track

Vintage advertising flyer for Ray's Track by Bally Manufacturing of Chicago, Illinois, then the pinball capital of the universe.

By the mid to late 30's, every manufacturer was rushing to cash in on the frenzied popularity of Ed Pace's Paces Races, the prototypical horse-racing consule of the type shown above, and Bally's founder and namesake, Ray Maloney, proved no exception.

By my reckoning, Baker and Evans came closest in duplicating Pace's success, but then World War II got in the way, and the postwar gambling vacuum was filled in part by pinball-styled bingo machines and in greater part by a certain desert city...