Cultural history
Automatic Pleasures
Nicholas Costa
A landmark history of the machines that reshaped leisure, vending, gaming and the modern automated world.
Find a copyAbout the book
Automatic Pleasures traces the coin machine from ancient invention to the nineteenth-century revolution that set the path toward an automated society.
First published in 1988 and later republished, it established new facts, challenged long-held industry myths and became a specialist reference on the international history of coin-operated machines.
A history that changed the record
Until it was reprinted, copies of the first edition regularly sold for many times their original cover price. The book challenged the American industry’s claims around the history of the juke box by revealing an earlier British patent.
It also sparked strong interest in Japan by addressing the origins of pachinko. The work’s findings helped prompt the establishment of a new museum in Kobe, and it has since been cited in many academic papers.
Research legacy
American coin-op historian Dick Bueschel regarded Nic Costa as his international counterpart and treated Automatic Pleasures as a definitive source for British and international coin-machine history. The two historians also exchanged research notes through professional correspondence.
Publication details
- Originally published 1988
- Republished 1992 and 2013
Critical response
Words from readers.
“Nic Costa’s classic Automatic Pleasures: The History of the Coin Op Machine is once again in print and as relevant as ever.”
Tricia, Amusing the Zillion
“Automatic Pleasures is enlivened by numerous excerpts from firsthand accounts of the era.”
Tricia, Amusing the Zillion