This is the untold story of the earliest days of coin operated devices which ultimately resulted in today's internet. It rewrites the history of Victorian technology. Many of the devices now claimed as the earliest or the first in fact were not. The supposed low brow technology used by the masses, hitherto deemed by the mainstream as not worth recording as history actually led directly to today's world. It ultimately succeeded in the late 1800s because it attracted some very high brow and highly influential money men as backers following the commercial success of a female patentee in the 1870s. Ironically the technology spread to America in the way that it did in the early 1880s because a young randy man couldn't keep his trousers on and had to be got out of the way for the sake of maintaining the respectability of members of Queen Victoria's household! Nic Costa is the acknowledged expert in the field, author of the best selling Automatic Pleasures

This book has stood the test of time. Copies of the first edition have over the years regularly sold for many times the cover price. The full color book is once more in print. Since its original publication it has been cited in many academic papers and has since become the definitive work on the subject. It caused embarrassment to the huge American coin machine industry when it was first published in 1988- they were busy celebrating the centenary of the Juke Box in that year as an American invention whereas the book revealed that it was actually an earlier British invention. It awoke huge interest in Japan by giving them long sought answers as to the origins of the Pachinko machine (which at the time was consuming as much as a quarter of the gross domestic product in Japan). As a direct result of the book a new museum was established in the Japanese city of Kobe and for a short while the author became a national celebrity there. The book established many new facts and destroyed many of the myths that had arisen in the gaming industry during the 20th century. Originally an ancient Greek invention, the advent of the coin machine in the 19th century heralded a Victorian revolution which sought to establish a fully automated society. The visionaries of the past are the direct forbears of the all pervasive computer industries -without the gaming and coin machine industries it is doubtful as to whether today's computer dominated age would have ever happened. Most important of all, it is fun to read!

Who or what were Adam, Noah, and Elijah? Where they real or imaginary? What exactly was Creation? Did something really happen sometime around 4,000 BC as the Bible tells us? What exactly was leprosy? Why is the Islamic world in turmoil after centuries of quiescence? Are the mass uprisings democratic movements against tyrannical regimes, or fanatical drives to promote the spread of Islam, or is there something else far more sinister at play? Adam to Apophis provides answers to all of these questions. For millennia major religions have held the unflinching belief that at some future point the world will once more enter an 'end time' phase. According to Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, and Mayan reckoning that 'end time' phase is this current century. Christianity also holds the same belief. During such phases the earth has been subjected to airbursts and meteoric impacts which in turn have spawned decades long sequences of major environmental traumas in the form of extreme weather, volcanic eruptions, massive earthquakes, and tsunamis. This 'future' phase is itself part of a larger cycle to which the Earth has been subjected a number of times during the past 6,000 years, resulting each time in worldwide societal collapse. Religious or mythological texts exist which feature fantastic creatures and long lived superhuman beings. The records have been fastidiously preserved for millennia. Jewish and Chinese texts have preserved associated chronologies. However these ancient chronologies have been repeatedly discounted or ignored by modern scholarship. In the past few decades science has built up its own independent chronology of the earth's recent past by means of dendrochronology, ice cores, ice rafting, sedimentology, volcanology and astronomical retro calculations. These now provide us with a tangible record of climatic and terrestrial traumas stretching back thousands of years. At first sight the two disciplines would appear to be in total opposition- the one seemingly relying on 'faith' and 'fabricated' evidence, and the other on scientific reason and hard fact. Given therefore the seeming polarity one would therefore expect to find little if any synchronicity between the two. What happens if we overlay the templates? Modern science has recently discovered an important earthly traumatic cycle know as Bond Events which occur every 1400-1500 years. The religious texts also clearly display knowledge of this cycle. Islam for example holds the belief that it will only last some 1400-1500 years. Adam to Apophis demonstrates that the concept of millenarianism is no idle fantasy but ultimately rests upon a firm foundation of real physical traumas. The book traces this primary cycle in stages back from the present day to: Bond Event 1: the advent of Islam in the 6th century AD when there was massive terrestrial and social upheaval worldwide. Bond Event 2: the 9th century BC where we discover the same pattern. In the Bible this is represented by the Elijah cycle of stories which focus upon a hitherto unidentified massive volcanic eruption in Arabia, but with clear evidence from regions as far afield as China that the trauma was worldwide. Bond Event 3: Noah's Flood, his true identity and the real location of the 'Ark' -still a major religious site comprising the largest cemetery in the world with millions of bodies buried there. The identities of the Chinese Emperors Yao, Shun, and Yu and a second impact site. Piora Oscillation: Death of Adam. The Nephilim. The Chinese Flame Emperors. The Mahabharata and Krishna Bond Event 4/ 5.9 Kiloyear Event: The true nature of 'Creation', the identity of Adam, the Ramayana and the Burckle Crater Adam to Apophis is an original and compelling work. It will be of indispensable interest not only to scientists and academics in a variety of disciplines, but also to the layman of whatever or no religious persuasion.

One Discipline, Four Ways offers the first book-length introduction to the history of each of the four major traditions in anthropology—British, German, French, and American. The result of lectures given by distinguished anthropologists Fredrik Barth, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silverman to mark the foundation of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, this volume not only traces the development of each tradition but considers their impact on one another and assesses their future potentials. Moving from E. B. Taylor all the way through the development of modern fieldwork, Barth reveals the repressive tendencies that prevented Britain from developing a variety of anthropological practices until the late 1960s. Gingrich, meanwhile, articulates the development of German anthropology, paying particular attention to the Nazi period, of which surprisingly little analysis has been offered until now. Parkin then assesses the French tradition and, in particular, its separation of theory and ethnographic practice. Finally, Silverman traces the formative influence of Franz Boas, the expansion of the discipline after World War II, and the "fault lines" and promises of contemporary anthropology in the United States.

This book reveals that scientific logic is an extension of common, everyday logic and that it can and should be understood by everyone. Written by a practicing and successful scientist, it explores why questions arise in science and looks at how questions are tackled, what constitutes a valid answer, and why. The author does not bog the reader down in technical details or lists of facts to memorize. He uses accessible examples, illustrations, and descriptions to address complex issues. The book should prove enlightening to anyone who has been perplexed by the meaning, relevance, and moral or political implications of science.

Throughout history, potters, sculptors, painters, poets, novelists, cartoonists, song-writers, photographers, and filmmakers have recorded and tried to make sense of boxing. From Daniel Mendoza to Mike Tyson, boxers have embodied and enacted our anxieties about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. In her encyclopedic investigation of the shifting social, political, and cultural resonances of this most visceral of sports, Kasia Boddy throws new light on an elemental struggle for dominance whose weapons are nothing more than fists. Looking afresh at everything from neoclassical sculpture to hip-hop lyrics, Boddy explores the ways in which the history of boxing has intersected with the history of mass media. Boddy pulls no punches, looking to the work of such diverse figures as Henry Fielding and Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin and Philip Roth, James Joyce and Mae West, Bertolt Brecht and Charles Dickens in an all-encompassing study that tells us just how and why boxing has mattered so much to so many.