… That is the name of a now-famous book about the roots of the amusement machine industry, written by enthusiast Nicholas Costa in the 1970s – and it has been reprinted.
The original was printed by D’Aleman Publishing and copies of the first edition have sold for well over the odds in the intervening years. Now it is back again, with full colour and full of where the industry originally came from.
Now I am a fan of history. Most folk think it’s as dull as watching Oldham Athletic v Brentford in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy on a wet Tuesday in January, but I believe that (unlike Oldham Athletic), history is a vital way for us all to think about what we’re doing and avoid making the same mistakes again.
So the history of our industry should be even more of a fascination for those who derive their living from it.
Automatic Pleasures can be found here on Amazon.
And while we are about it, many of the old timers from the 1970s/1980s will remember the series of articles on the background to the business written by Nic Costa and published in Coin Slot, Location and Nudge over the years. Those articles have been collated into a paperback named More Automatic Pleasures –the Slot Machine Revolution and is due out this month.
Since those old days when Nic used to write those pages for me in Coin Slot, he has moved into other things and relocated to Cyprus where Nic founded an art school. But he has now returned to his first love, writing about the coin machine business.
He tells us that the new book will comprise facsimilie copies of the original articles and will be in A4 format. “The original has surprisingly taken on a life of its own; I’ve seen copies regularly advertised for as much as US$275 and it has been cited many times over the years in academic studies in a number of languages.
“What disappoints me is how the major British institutions have still not woken up to the fact that our industry was important and much of it born in the UK, later to spread across the world and to ultimately generate today’s computer games age.”
Perhaps they will this time. I shall certainly be picking up copies of both publications – maybe I’ll get a mention, I’m old enough…
