

For sale: an Enigma machine - epo
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=5370959&sid=5d471a41-553e-4a2d-b9ee-cf27e36133b8

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Robin_Message
Also, the next lot is even more exciting: Some offprints of Turing's papers
and manuscripts, formed by Prof. Maxwell Newman, guide price _300 to 500
thousand pounds!_ Apparently these are extremely rare; none have appeared in
auction for 35 years!

[http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=sal...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&pos=10&intObjectID=5370960&sid=5d471a41-553e-4a2d-b9ee-
cf27e36133b8)

~~~
KoZeN
[http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=sal...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&pos=5&intObjectID=5370965&sid=5d471a41-553e-4a2d-b9ee-
cf27e36133b8)

I'm surprised this hadn't had more attention here!

 _APPLE-1 -- Personal Computer. An Apple-1 motherboard, number 82, printed
label to reverse, with a few slightly later additions including a 6502
microprocessor, labeled R6502P R6502-11 8145, printed circuit board with 4
rows A-D and columns 1-18, three capacitors, heatsink, cassette board
connector, 8K bytes of RAM, keyboard interface, firmware in PROMS, low-profile
sockets on all integrated circuits, video terminal, breadboard area with
slightly later connector, with later soldering, wires and electrical tape to
reverse, printed to obverse Apple Computer 1 Palo Alto. Ca. Copyright 1976_

~~~
asmithmd1
Wow! a the Apple-1 is estimated to go for £100,000 - £150,000

I wonder if there are any artifacts from todays companies that we should be
grabbing up

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asmithmd1
Now I see why - it comes with the optional cassette interface and BASIC on a
tape :)

Seriously it is an exceptional artifact: original invoice (Salesperson:
STEVEN) and a typed note from Steven Jobs explaining how to hook-up a TV and
keyboard:
[http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/ZoomImage.aspx?image=/lot...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/ZoomImage.aspx?image=/lotfinderimages/D53709/d5370965)

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user24
I hope a museum gets it, but I think it will probably go for much more than
the estimate.

By the way, any UK HNers should definitely try to get down to the museum at
Bletchley park and the national computing museum. Geek heaven :)

edit: wow, they also have the first published ENIAC patents:
[http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=sal...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=5370963&sid=b1077a41-474f-47b4-8f48-25f5c24fca97)

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shrikant
Visitors might want to be a bit patient on the guided tour - largely seems a
waste of time initially, with the guide talking a lot about the history of the
land/park itself, and the WW2/code-breaking info being somewhat superficial.

Then he takes you into the National Museum of Computing and demonstrates the
machines, and sometimes lets you touch and feel as well - awesome! The guided
tour ends on quite the high!

~~~
user24
depends on the guide I guess, I've been there about 4 times (used to live just
down the road, and the ticket is for a whole year!) and took the tour twice,
the code-breaking content wasn't highly technical, but it was covered in a
decent amount of depth I felt.

Riddle from the tour: What must you add to nine to get six? (and no, it's not
-3)

~~~
user24
replying in case someone years from now reads this:

Gur nafjre vf f. avar va ebzna ahzrenyf vf vk, nqq na f naq lbh trg fvk ;)

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cromulent
One day, I'd like to have a library like Jay Walker's to add this to. He's
even got a Sputnik in there, along with his Enigma.

[http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker...](http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all)

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wgrover
Bay Area folks who've read down this far, you'll absolutely love the Computer
History Museum, <http://www.computerhistory.org>

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Luc
That would look nice on the living room cupboard, but you can't beat this one
for glamour: <http://www.tatjavanvark.nl/tvv1/pht10.html>

Perhaps someone here will be able to decrypt that encoded Haiku...

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pbhjpbhj
I was interested in the many manuscripts in that sale. I wonder if Google
would buy them, scan them and resell them ... they could buy through a third
party/anonymous bid and only release the scanned copy after the resale to
avoid a negative effect on price.

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ljf
Amazing piece of kit that would be great to own - but what would /you/ do with
one?

~~~
brk
You could probably gut it and put an Arduino inside of it that played MP3's.

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astine
With all due respect, wouldn't that be a little like upholstering your couch
with the Bayeux Tapestry? While the Enigma machine isn't exactly one of a
kind, it is quite rare and has a great deal of historical significance.

~~~
brk
Sorry, I had a feeling the sarcasm in my initial post wouldn't fully come
through :)

I probably should have gone with the steampunk-themed comment I was originally
planning.

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tomjen3
30-50k pounds. Shit thats a high price.

~~~
user24
You think? I wouldn't have been surprised to see it fetch twice the high
estimate. It's got appeal to people interested in:

Computing

Codes/Ciphers

WW2

That's pretty broad appeal. I mean even if it was only of interest to Turing
fans that's still a huge market, and Turing fans are only a small subset of
those larger markets.

Just my opinion, I've no idea if these things come up fairly often or not.

~~~
tomjen3
It may still fetch more, but honestly that doesn't change that it is a very
large amount of money.

~~~
shabda
> that it is a very large amount of money.

Compared to what?

People pay 100K$ for rocks which have no intrintrinsic value.

