Amusement arcades are an important part of British culture, yet discussions of them tend to be based on American models. Alan Meades, who spent his childhood happily playing in British seaside arcades, presents the history of the arcade from its origins in traveling fairs of the 1800s to the present. Drawing on firsthand accounts of industry members and archival sources, including rare photographs and trade publications, he tells the story of the first arcades, the people who made the machines, the rise of video games, and the legislative and economic challenges spurred by public fears of moral decline. Arcade Britannia highlights the differences between British and North American arcades, especially in terms of the complex relationship between gambling and amusements. He also underlines Britain's role in introducing coin-operated technologies into Europe, as well as the industry's close links to America and, especially, Japan. He shows how the British arcade is a product of centuries of public play, gambling, entrepreneurship, and mechanization. Examining the arcade's history through technological, social, cultural, biographic, and legislative perspectives, he describes a pendulum shift between control and liberalization, as well as the continued efforts of concerned moralists to limit and regulate public play. Finally, he recounts the impact on the industry of legislative challenges that included vicious taxation, questions of whether copyright law applied to video-game code, and the peculiar moment when every arcade game in Britain was considered a cinema.
...MoreReview Dustin Abnet (2023) Review of "Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade". Technology and Culture (pp. 1002-1003).
Article
Rachel Maines;
(2013)
'Stings and Bangs': Amateur Science and Gender in Twentieth-Century Living Spaces
(/isis/citation/CBB704933445/)
Book
Schüll, Natasha Dow;
(2012)
Addiction by design: machine gambling in Las Vegas
(/isis/citation/CBB947045565/)
Book
Kenneth Cohen;
(2020)
They Will Have Their Game: Sporting Culture and the Making of the Early American Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB062422855/)
Chapter
Coopey, Richard;
Shakesheff, Tim;
(2011)
Angling and Nature: Environment, Leisure, Class and Culture in Britain 1750--1975
(/isis/citation/CBB001214632/)
Book
Thierry Hoquet;
(2015)
Current Perspectives on Sexual Selection: What's left after Darwin?
(/isis/citation/CBB794907195/)
Book
Pursell, Carroll W.;
(2015)
From Playgrounds to PlayStation: The Interaction of Technology and Play
(/isis/citation/CBB001422613/)
Book
O. Alan Weltzien;
(2016)
Exceptional Mountains: A Cultural History of the Pacific Northwest Volcanoes
(/isis/citation/CBB606577407/)
Chapter
Michele Gasparetto;
Sergio Sartori;
(2014)
Il contributo delle misure
(/isis/citation/CBB771468546/)
Book
Sambrook, Stephen C;
Köster, Roman;
Stokes, Raymond G.;
(2013)
The Business of Waste: Great Britain and Germany, 1945 to the Present
(/isis/citation/CBB049551629/)
Book
Dewey, Peter E.;
(2008)
Iron Harvests of the Field: The Making of Farm Machinery in Britain since 1800
(/isis/citation/CBB001201105/)
Chapter
Adriana Di Leo;
(2014)
Meccanica e società
(/isis/citation/CBB010133090/)
Chapter
Attilio Selvini;
Peter Dannecker;
(2014)
La meccanica delle armi da fuoco portatili
(/isis/citation/CBB976001827/)
Chapter
Roberto Curti;
Andrea Cinotti;
(2014)
Le macchine operatrici nella produzione industriale
(/isis/citation/CBB309093350/)
Chapter
Annalisa Banzi;
Edoardo Rovida;
(2014)
Collezioni, archivi, musei
(/isis/citation/CBB331048322/)
Book
Virginio Cantoni;
Vittorio Marchis;
Edoardo Rovida;
(2014)
Storia della Meccanica
(/isis/citation/CBB405054620/)
Article
Juan Ricardo Nazer;
Manuel Llorca-Jaña;
(Autumn 2021)
The Development of the Casino Industry in Chile
(/isis/citation/CBB261222871/)
Chapter
Attilio Selvini;
(2014)
La meccanica di precisione, con particolare riferimento agli strumenti per la misura topografica e fotogrammetrica
(/isis/citation/CBB162031448/)
Chapter
Francesco Tozzi Spadoni;
(2014)
Sintesi storica dello sviluppo della tecnologia tessile
(/isis/citation/CBB643549977/)
Chapter
Emilio Chirone;
(2014)
Note sulla storia del disegno di macchine
(/isis/citation/CBB046114968/)
Thesis
Aytes, Ayhan;
(2012)
The “Other” in the Machine: Oriental Automata and the Mechanization of the Mind
(/isis/citation/CBB001560964/)
Be the first to comment!