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...
For sale: an Enigma machine
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: For sale: an Enigma machine
#12I 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...
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!
Re: For sale: an Enigma machine
#13Also, 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...
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
Re: For sale: an Enigma machine
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It may still fetch more, but honestly that doesn't change that it is a very large amount of money.
Compared to what?
People pay 100K$ for rocks which have no intrintrinsic value.
Re: For sale: an Enigma machine
#15Also, 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...
Re: For sale: an Enigma machine
#16Amazing piece of kit that would be great to own - but what would /you/ do with one?
Re: For sale: an Enigma machine
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It may still fetch more, but honestly that doesn't change that it is a very large amount of money.
Re: For sale: an Enigma machine
#18Also, 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...
Re: For sale: an Enigma machine
#19Amazing piece of kit that would be great to own - but what would /you/ do with one?
Re: For sale: an Enigma machine
#20Amazing piece of kit that would be great to own - but what would /you/ do with one?