Prince Manufacturing Corporation

Vivitronics Corporation

Gerard F Sweeton

Howard Head

A propulsion device is provided, designed especially for discharging tennis balls for practice purposes, at selected angles of inclination, and at a predetermined, selected velocity. Employed in the device is a distributor, which is disposed between a hopper and an air pressurizing drum, the distributor being designed to feed balls, one at a time, to the drum, at predetermined intervals. The distributor is disposed between the hopper and drum in such fashion as to cause the spherical objects to be efficiently agitated within the hopper, by passage over the exteriorly cylindrical surface of the drum while moving to the point at which the objects feed into the drum. Efficient agitation of the spherical objects within the hopper thus assures to the maximum extent that the distributor will be fully charged with said objects. A trap door, normally closed by air pressure within the drum, is moved with maximum speed to an open position responsive to the free fall of a spherical object from the distributor into the drum, and moves with equal speed back to a closed position. By holding the open time of the trap door to a minimum, it becomes possible for the device to be interiorly constructed with a simple receiving pipe characterized by an absence of annular induced air flow assemblies and other arrangements which have heretofore been employed.

Propulsion device for tennis balls and like spherical objects

A board game having a board with an array of pockets or recesses in the upper surface thereof including magnetic bases located within the game board below each of the pockets, each magnetic base having a randomly selected magnetic polarity, the game including a plurality of round, magnetic playing pieces adapted to be placed in the pockets and having oppositely colored sides of opposite polarity, said pieces adapted to align themselves with either colored side oriented upward responsive to the particular polarity of the particular pocket in which located.

Magnetic board game

A ball projecting machine is provided with ball deflector for controlling the direction in which balls are projected from the machine. The deflector is movable from one position to another and is actuated by a ball being projected so that the direction of travel of successive balls discharged from the machine may be varied. The deflector has a mechanism for holding the deflector in a predetermined position until engaged by a discharged ball.

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Skillman, NJ, United States of America

Gerard F Sweeton