 | | |  | |
      | ||||
 |
|
| |
Relics of Computer History in New York Auction
 02/21/2005 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Computer geeks who love history have a chance to get their hands on rare documents and technical relics at "The Origins of Cyberspace" sale in New York next week, Christie's auction house said on Friday. Much of the material on offer might seem dry to the uninitiated but for those in the know, there are some gems. Lots on offer include an early version of a data storage disc dating from 1951, weighing 5.5 pounds which could only hold about the equivalent of one paragraph of text. Also on offer is a 1946 business plan for a company to design and build a "multi-purpose rapid computing machine of moderate cost." The plan was drawn up by pioneers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, whose list of possible users of their machine is remarkably prescient, if limited. It includes banks, insurance companies and government census offices. "The cost of such electronic computor (sic), of course, can only be estimated very roughly at this time, but present judgment is that the development work will make it possible to make such a machine for less than $30,000, and possibly as low as $5,000," the document says. The oldest of the 1,000 or so items gathered into 255 sale lots is a 1613 edition of a treatise by the Italian Lorenzo Pignoria on slavery in Roman times which includes an illustration of a Roman table abacus, or reckoning table. There are books documenting the history of mathematical calculation from the 17th century to the present day, as well as antique slide rules and a 1966 "Brainiac Electric Brain Kit" designed and marketed by Edmund Berkeley to teach the principles of electronic digital computing. The kit includes wires, bulbs, socket parts, bolts and manuals. The collection was put together by San Francisco book dealer Jeremy Norman, whose interest was sparked when he saw a historical display at the offices of IBM in the early 1970s. One of the highlights of his collection is the first English edition of a seminal paper by Luigi Federico Menabrea called "Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage" and published in 1843. Babbage was a British mathematician who designed an "Analytical Engine" so complicated and far ahead of its time that it could only be partly exploited 100 years later. Lord Byron's daughter, Augusta Ada King, translated the original from French and both editions are part of the collection. Pre-sale estimates for the lots range from around $200 to $70,000 and the total for the collection adds up to between $800,000 and $1.2 million. At the sale on Feb. 23, buyers will have an opportunity first to bid for the entire collection as a whole and only if it does not reach an unspecified reserve will the lots be sold separately and the collection split up. News Archive | |
| | |||||||||||||||
|
Home | About Us | Solutions | Customers | Account | Contact Us | Korean Links
Return Policy | Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions
| ||||||||||||||||||||
You have 
