Technology history
Penny in the Slot: Conceiving the Internet
Nicholas Costa
A revisionist history of Victorian coin-operated technology and the people who made it possible.
Find a copyAbout the book
This is the untold story of the earliest coin-operated devices, which ultimately resulted in today’s internet.
Costa revisits the history of Victorian technology, following the overlooked inventions, commercial backing and social forces that carried this machinery across the Atlantic.
A revised Victorian history
Many devices now claimed as the earliest or first were not. The technology once dismissed as low-brow entertainment was not only worth recording, it helped lead directly to today’s technological world.
The book traces the commercial success of a female patentee in the 1870s and the influential financial backing that allowed the technology to spread to America in the early 1880s.
Critical response
Words from readers.
“In this book Costa cuts through the fog… He illuminates a way through the gloom, showing a way further back into the past than has been done before… I applaud this book!”
Professor Dr Alan Meades Ph.D, Principal Lecturer, School of Creative Arts, Canterbury Christ Church University, U.K.
“In June, 2023, I purchased a copy of your new Penny in the Slot… 1735-1883 book, but didn’t find the time to read it. This Christmas my family and I took a trip to visit my wife’s family for the holidays. I took the book with me, started, and basically didn’t stop until I was finished reading it the same day. I liked it a lot. Thank you for writing it.”
Greg McLemore, International Arcade Museum, The Videogame & Arcade Preservation Society (VAPS)