Things Have History

Cost

Every post on this site is generated end to end by an engine. This is what each post costs to make.

The costs below are the direct API spend on text generation, cover illustration, and audio narration. We don't include fixed hosting costs (the Hetzner box, the domain, Cloudflare's free tier) because those don't vary with how many posts ship.

Running total

Posts shipped
179
Total spent
$157.23
Average per post
$0.88

By provider

Provider Used for Total spent Share
Anthropic Claude — text generation $156.66 99.6%
DeepInfra Flux-1-schnell — cover illustration $0.22 0.1%
DeepInfra TTS — audio narration $0.35 0.2%

Per post

Post Claude (text) Flux (cover) TTS (audio) Total
"Sega Genesis and the console wars: how a hedgehog took half the market from Nintendo" $2.022 $0.0013 $0.0022 $2.03
"The Zimmermann Telegram, or how a decoded cable brought America into the war" $0.82 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.82
"The Medici Bank and the invention of modern finance" $0.855 $0.0013 $0.0023 $0.86
"Perreaux's steam velocipede" $0.693 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.7
"The Cassini survey: four generations to map a kingdom" $0.757 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.76
"Soref's laminated padlock, or how a Milwaukee workshop closed the security gap" $0.823 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.83
"The Iron Bridge, or how a Shropshire gorge became the template for everything that followed" $0.784 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.79
"Beni Hasan's wall of wrestlers: Egypt's oldest sports record" $0.917 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.92
"BlackBerry 850: the device that made email check you" $0.856 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.86
"Breguet's wristwatch, or the timepiece that arrived fifty years too soon" $0.731 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.73
"The welt that made shoes worth keeping" $1.181 $0.0013 $0.002 $1.18
"Gabriel de Clieu's water ration" $0.663 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.67
"Smalltalk and the machine it was built for" $1.511 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.51
"One script for all China: the Qin standardization, 221 BCE" $0.894 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.9
"Samuel's checkers player: the program that coined machine learning" $0.876 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.88
"Benz Patent-Motorwagen: a wall in Mannheim and the birth certificate of the automobile" $0.728 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.73
"The dissertation that named the web" $1.164 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.17
"Sylvester Roper's steam velocipede" $0.879 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.88
"Mongolian wrestling and the world's first crowd" $1.093 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.1
"Vim: from Vi IMitation to Vi IMproved" $1.201 $0.0013 $0.002 $1.2
"Harvard Mark I: the machine that took up a wall" $0.796 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.8
"The Nintendo Entertainment System, or the console Nintendo refused to call a console" $0.836 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.84
"Frank Miller's one-time pad" $0.776 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.78
"Marco Polo and the money made of trees" $0.847 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.85
"Mercator's projection: the map that straightened the sea" $0.832 $0.0013 $0.0023 $0.84
"Sargent's time lock, or how a Rochester locksmith made coercion useless" $0.883 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.89
"Kintai-kyō: the five wooden arches of Iwakuni" $0.785 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.79
"IBM Simon, or the first computer you could also make calls on" $0.709 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.71
"John Harrison's H4 and the Longitude Prize" $0.939 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.94
"The McKay stitcher, or how a hollow needle ended the age of the hand-sewn shoe" $0.763 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.77
"Dead on arrival: how the VOC broke Yemen's coffee monopoly" $0.806 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.81
"BASIC, or the language designed to be learned in an afternoon" $0.957 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.96
"Brahmi script: from Ashoka's pillars to three billion living letters" $1.148 $0.0013 $0.0023 $1.15
"The Logic Theorist: a machine that proved theorems before AI had a name" $0.963 $0.0013 $0.0023 $0.97
"Lenoir's Hippomobile: eleven kilometres on a coal-gas engine" $0.978 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.98
"Enterprise JavaBeans and the era of the application server" $1.194 $0.0013 $0.0022 $1.2
"BBEdit, or what a cancelled compiler left behind" $0.872 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.87
"Colossus: the machine that Britain built, classified, and ordered destroyed" $0.7 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.7
"The video game crash of 1983" $0.883 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.89
"The Playfair cipher, or the one the Foreign Office refused" $1.159 $0.0013 $0.0022 $1.16
"The jiaozi, or what happens when your money needs its own ox cart" $0.809 $0.0013 $0 $0.81
"The map that named America" $0.906 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.91
"Yale's cylinder lock, or how the portrait painter solved the front door" $0.733 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.74
"Pont Neuf: the bridge that gave Paris its river back" $0.706 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.71
"The DynaTAC 8000X, or the phone that finally left the car" $1.104 $0.0013 $0.0018 $1.11
"Huygens's pendulum clock: fifteen minutes become fifteen seconds" $0.686 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.69
"The straight last: when shoes finally learned left from right" $1.016 $0.0013 $0.0021 $1.02
"Seven beans and a long walk from Mocha" $0.786 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.79
"ALGOL 60: an improvement on nearly all its successors" $1.553 $0.0013 $0.0024 $1.56
"Latin alphabet: how a borrowed script conquered the world" $0.882 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.88
"Dartmouth, 1956: the summer that named a field" $0.79 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.79
"Hancock's Enterprise: London's first scheduled motor bus" $0.869 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.87
"Design Patterns: the catalog that gave software a common language" $0.871 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.87
"Brief, or the keyboard that other editors had to imitate" $1.25 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.25
"Konrad Zuse's Z3: the computer the war didn't notice" $0.891 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.89
"Donkey Kong: the game that made Nintendo" $0.925 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.93
"Jefferson's wheel cipher, or the invention the army made twice" $1.26 $0.0013 $0 $1.26
"The Arab dinar, or the coin that erased the emperor's face" $0.906 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.91
"The Hereford Mappa Mundi: the world as it was meant to be" $0.679 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.68
"The Great Lock Controversy of 1851" $0.724 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.73
"The Rialto Bridge, or how Venice bet on a single arch" $0.724 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.73
"Joel's handoff patent, or how the cellular network learned to keep a call alive" $0.877 $0.0013 $0.0023 $0.88
"Galileo's pendulum, or the clock he never lived to build" $0.835 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.84
"Louis XIV's red heels: when footwear was a court credential" $0.837 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.84
"Pasqua Rosée and London's first coffeehouse" $0.927 $0.0013 $0 $0.93
"COBOL, or how a committee invented the world's most durable programming language" $0.698 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.7
"The Greek alphabet, or how borrowed consonants became the world's first vowels" $0.985 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.99
"Shannon's chess paper and the problem it was really solving" $0.823 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.83
"De Rivaz's hydrogen carriage: the first internal-combustion automobile" $1.061 $0.0013 $0.0018 $1.06
"Three-tier architecture, or how the application server ate the fat client" $0.987 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.99
"Alice Pascal: the editor that refused to let you make a mistake" $2.368 $0.0013 $0.002 $2.37
"The Atanasoff-Berry Computer, or the basement machine that unmade ENIAC" $0.74 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.74
"Pac-Man, or the game designed for people who didn't play games" $0.843 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.85
"Bellaso's cipher, or three centuries filed under the wrong name" $0.912 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.92
"The Byzantine solidus: the gold coin that ran the medieval world" $0.658 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.66
"The Book of Roger: al-Idrisi maps the world in silver" $0.879 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.88
"The Chubb Detector lock: security with a memory" $0.743 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.75
"Old London Bridge, the crossing that became a city" $0.828 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.83
"Touch-Tone: Bell's push-button phone and the day dialing became a command" $0.411 $0 $0.0023 $0.41
"Peter Henlein's pomander, or the clock that fit in a hand" $0.808 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.81
"The chopine, or how Venice balanced status on a fifty-centimetre platform" $0.638 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.64
"Hakem, Shems, and the first coffeehouse" $1.142 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.14
"Lisp, or the language that ran before anyone knew it could" $1.002 $0.0013 $0.0023 $1.01
"The Phoenician alphabet, or how twenty-two consonants built the rest" $0.874 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.88
"Turing's imitation game" $0.724 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.73
"Trevithick's Puffing Devil: up Camborne Hill on Christmas Eve" $0.932 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.94
"Seven boxes in Washington" $1.086 $0.0013 $0.0024 $1.09
"Turbo Pascal: the whole IDE in thirty-eight kilobytes" $0.907 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.91
"Shannon's switching circuits, 1937" $0.881 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.88
"Space Invaders: the glitch Nishikado kept" $0.656 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.66
"Trithemius's Polygraphia: the abbot's grid that launched three centuries of polyalphabetic ciphers" $1.187 $0.0013 $0.0023 $1.19
"The aureus and the long debasement" $1.377 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.38
"Tabula Peutingeriana: seven metres of Roman roads" $0.745 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.75
"Bramah's challenge lock: a 200-guinea dare that stood for sixty-seven years" $0.91 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.91
"Anji Bridge: the flattest arch in the ancient world" $1.429 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.43
"The Salisbury clock, or the machine that forgot to have a face" $0.782 $0.0013 $0.0023 $0.79
"The poulaine, or how a pointed toe became a matter for Parliament" $0.769 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.77
Qahwa and the Sufi monks of Aden $1.107 $0.0013 $0.0021 $1.11
"Fortran, or the compiler nobody believed in" $0.897 $0.0013 $0.0024 $0.9
"Oracle bone script, or how the Shang talked to their ancestors" $1.043 $0.0013 $0.0021 $1.05
"McCulloch and Pitts, or a mind made of thresholds" $1.173 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.18
Cugnot's fardier: the first machine to move under its own power $0.669 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.67
The machine at the end of the hallway $1.164 $0.0013 $0.0018 $1.17
"EMACS, or the macro that became an editor" $0.968 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.97
The trust that outgrew its name $0.973 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.98
"The Atari 2600, or the machine Bushnell sold Atari to build" $1.286 $0.0013 $0.0018 $1.29
"Alberti's cipher disk: the wheel that broke frequency analysis" $0.775 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.78
The Roman denarius, or the coin that named money $0.832 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.83
Ptolemy's Geography and the grid that outlasted Rome $0.8 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.8
The precise lift, or how a Hoxton locksmith beat the pick $0.918 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.92
The car phone, or how eighty pounds of vacuum tubes first put a telephone on the road $1.084 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.09
The mechanical escapement, or when clocks learned to tick $0.882 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.89
The turnshoe, or how medieval cordwainers sewed the seam inside $0.772 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.78
The first assembler $0.934 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.94
The Indus Valley script, or what five signs can hide $1.018 $0.0013 $0.002 $1.02
"Turing's machine, or the question no algorithm can answer" $0.885 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.89
What the module doesn't tell you $0.796 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.8
"vi, or the editor that made modes out of necessity" $0.811 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.81
Pong, or the game Alcorn built to learn his job $0.848 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.85
"Al-Kindi's frequency analysis, or how counting letters broke every substitution cipher" $0.691 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.69
The ban liang, or the coin that outlasted its empire $0.77 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.77
Eratosthenes measures the Earth, or how a shadow told the whole story $0.973 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.98
The guild masterpiece, or the keyhole that wasn't there $0.874 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.88
Trajan's Bridge, or how to cross a river by moving it first $0.82 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.82
The call across the Atlantic, or how Rocky Point and Rugby shrank the ocean $1.083 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.09
Su Song's clock tower, or the machine that told the whole sky $0.832 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.83
Han dynasty silk shoes, or the hierarchy sewn into every sole $1.116 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.12
Short Code, or the first time a machine did the translating $0.736 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.74
Egyptian hieroglyphs, or how language learned to last $0.754 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.76
Frege's Begriffsschrift $0.935 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.94
Simula 67, or how a Norwegian harbor simulation gave software its objects $0.812 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.81
"ed: the editor that still ships with every Unix" $0.885 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.89
"The Hollerith tabulator, or how counting Americans built a company called IBM" $0.795 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.8
Computer Space, the world's first coin-operated video game $0.882 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.89
"The Kama Sutra cipher, or why secret writing was the forty-fourth art" $0.64 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.64
The Lydian stater $0.761 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.76
The incense clock, or how China measured the night in smoke $0.661 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.66
The barbed-spring padlock $0.775 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.78
The Pont du Gard, or how Rome moved a river across a gorge $0.902 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.9
Ctesibius's clepsydra, or the water clock that fixed itself $0.676 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.68
The wheel that replaced the operator $0.907 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.91
Roman caligae, or why the empire marched on hobnails $0.742 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.75
Plankalkül, or how to invent a programming language during an air raid $0.838 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.84
"Cuneiform: the script that could say your name" $0.801 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.8
Boole's algebra of thought $0.561 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.56
What the flowchart hides $0.867 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.87
QED, or how fifteen years of mathematics became a search command $0.698 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.7
Ada Lovelace's Notes on an engine that never ran $0.661 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.66
Spacewar!, or the game no one thought to sell $0.974 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.98
The Caesar cipher, or how a shift of three kept Rome's orders from Gallic hands $0.738 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.74
The shell that circled the world $1.069 $0.0013 $0.0019 $1.07
Anaximander's world map, or how a philosopher drew the whole earth $1.185 $0.0013 $0.0021 $1.19
The Roman warded lock $0.807 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.81
The Arkadiko bridge, or the oldest arch still standing $0.674 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.68
The undertaker who put telephone operators out of a job $0.763 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.77
The Egyptian clepsydra, or how priests told time without the sun $0.697 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.7
The Mesopotamian shekel, or how a weight became money $0.69 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.69
The scytale, or how Sparta encrypted its orders $0.528 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.53
The bridge at Girsu, or the world's oldest crossing $0.912 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.92
The Babylonian world map, or how an empire drew the edge of everything $0.669 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.67
Greek krepis and kothornos — the shoe as theater $0.744 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.75
Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator, or let us calculate who is right $0.775 $0.0013 $0.0023 $0.78
Babbage's Difference Engine, or the most expensive one-seventh of a calculator $0.734 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.74
"Structured programming: sequence, selection, iteration" $0.816 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.82
Tennis for Two, or the physicist who didn't notice what he'd done $0.478 $0.0013 $0.0023 $0.48
The New Haven exchange, or how a switchboard made from teapot lids wired a city $0.524 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.53
The letter that killed the goto $0.586 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.59
OXO, or the video game that Cambridge kept to itself $0.541 $0.0013 $0.002 $0.54
Bell's telephone, or how nine words traveled down a wire $0.559 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.56
Ada Lovelace's Note G, or the first program for a machine that didn't exist $0.703 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.71
TECO, or the editor that was also a programming language $0.88 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.88
The wooden lock, or the first machine for keeping people out $0.65 $0.0013 $0.0019 $0.65
"Proto-cuneiform tokens: the first writing was a receipt" $1.018 $0.0013 $0.0021 $1.02
The shadow clock, or how Egypt turned sunlight into hours $1.233 $0.0013 $0.002 $1.24
The Abauntz map, or how a hunter scratched the world onto a stone $0.743 $0.0013 $0.0017 $0.75
Llull's Ars Magna, or how a troubadour built the first reasoning machine $0.58 $0.0013 $0.0022 $0.58
Egyptian papyrus sandals — footwear as social code, c. 1500 BCE $0.57 $0.0013 $0.0018 $0.57
The Jacquard loom, or how a silk weaver programmed a machine $0.482 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.48
HTTP200.Thepostislive. $0.655 $0.0013 $0.0021 $0.66

What's not on this page

Fixed costs that don't scale per post: a single Hetzner virtual server (running the dynamic API), the domain renewal, and Cloudflare's free tier for the static site and CDN. Together those are in the low double digits per month. We don't average them across posts on this page because we think the marginal cost of one more post is the honest number to report.

We also don't include human time. The system runs autonomously day to day; the time we put in is on the engine itself, not on each individual post.

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