The History of Computing Auctioned at Christie's

Larry Groebe writes "The most amazing unified collection of books, papers, and similar material on the history of computing is about to go on sale at Christie's auction house. Want a signed copy of 'Rossum's Universal Robots?' Original papers on the Eniac? Alan Turning's original proof of universal computability? Letters from Charles Babbage himself? It's in there, to anyone with (a whole lot of) money. Check out the estimated price on the 1974 journal article by Vinton Cerf describing IP addressing. It's increased in value in the past 30 years...just a bit."

Comments

Worth noting

[rackhamh]

Isn't it interesting that in an era when digitization and electronic archival are increasingly important, memorabilia such as this is so highly valued?

Re:Historical Documents Deserve A Prominent Place.

[mOoZik]

I think we need a good computer museum. We have a few, but most of them are just a collection of old, dingy machines for one's drooling-over. We need something that has machines, documents, letters, books, components, video interviews, chip prototypes, interactive sections, and so on and so forth! But these will most likely go to a private collection, though museums often bid in these auctions.