By Jo Best, 2 February 2005 15:40
NEWS Auction house Christie's is holding a sale of computing history.
Among the pieces that will be going under the hammer in the 'Origins of Cyberspace' sale will be first editions of works from the father of the computer, Charles Babbage. For around $15,000, bidders can get their hands on 'A letter to Sir Humphry Davy, Bart... on the application of machinery to the purpose of calculating and printing mathematical tables' first published in 1822, where Babbage explains the details of his Difference Engine.
Bidders with a bigger wallet, however, can get their hands on a more modern treasure, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly's Outline of plans for development of electronic computers, which the Christie's catalogue describes as "the founding document in the electronic computer industry". Expect to pay between $50,000 and $70,000 for the privilege of owning it.
Other lots include Edmund C. Berkeley's Giant brains or machines that think, expected to fetch between $20,000 and $30,000, and Karel Capek's Rossum's Universal Robots from 1920, for up to $20,000.
However, for anyone wanting to pick up something by a familiar name, one of Vint Cerf's articles A protocol for packet network intercommunication from the 1970s is up for grabs - and expected to reach up to $3,000.
The sale will take place in the New York office of Christie's on 23 February.
Comments
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1. Richard Sarson
Hey, why all this Yankee stuff? Christie's is British innit. What abaht Turing's original ideas for a computer in 1936, or the blueprint for the Bletchley Park Colossus, or Maurice Wilkes' design for EDSAC in Cambridge, or Kilby's "Baby" at Manchester, or Donald Davies' packet switching, or Sir Tim B-L's ideas at CERN for the WWW.
2. anonymous
If your correspondents can't express themselves more intelligibly than to insult Christie's for selling foreign goods (where does this idiot think Ming vases come from?), then at least edit his frothings for geographical accuracy.
A "Yankee" is someone from one of the original thirteen American states - the current north-east of the US. I believe the word your correspondent had in mind is "American".
How about just deleting the silly comment?
3. MikeW
Well, it *is* Richard Sarson. Read his other articles !
And I imagine that "Yankee" is used in the same sense that US Americans use the term "Limey" for inhabitants of Britain, rather than for Elizabethan sailors.
On the computing front, I've still got my Acorn Atom, homebuilt 8080 CPU board, Ferranti Pegasus assembler book and Maurice Wilkes' lecture notes from the year he retired (I should have got him to sign them !!)