Where do business people go these days to find out the latest business news or to keep up to date with scientific developments ? the answer is simply : they log on to the internet. three hundered years ago , the answer was just as simple : they went to a coffee house. There , for the price of a cup of coffee people could read newspapers , catch up on the latest news , listen to scientific lectures , do business , or simply chat about the state of the world .the european coffee houses of the early 1650's was mainly for businessmen , writers , politicians and scientists . Like today's websites , coffee houses were exciting places to be , but you could never be sure that information you found there was accurate . In the early days , only men who went to coffee houses , because people thought that coffee was bad for women's health .