Invitations handwritten and signed by Charles Babbage, seminal papers by  Alan Turing and Claude Shannon, a "Blue Box" phone hacking device, a prototype Apple Macintosh and an Apple Lisa 2/10 are among items in on ongoing online auction at Bonhams, that ends on 23 October 2024. Update: The Auction has closed and we have its results.

The 42 lots in the History of Science and Technology sale are arranged by date, earliest first. Lot 1 is dated 1485 and is a bound volume of 44 leaves that is one of the earliest illustrations of a surgical procedure. Highlights of the sale include a penicillin mold medallion inscribed by Alexander Fleming, a portrait, oil on canvas of Albert Einstein by Eugen Spiro, and a  typewritten letter signed J R Oppenheimer. The final lot, is an Apple iPhone 1 sealed in orginal box with an estimate of $15,000-20,000.

Update: At the end of the auction Lot 42 remained unsold, so no bid reached its reserve.

For those interested in computer history, the earliest items of interest are Lots 7 and 8, which are notes handwritten and signed by Charles Babbage. The first, dated July 22 1832 and addressed "Dear Sir" is an invitation to to visit his difference engine at the premises of engineer Joseph Clement with himself and John Rennie:

The second, from 1833, reads:

My dear Mrs. Lister,
Lady Lovelace, Faraday and a few friends are coming to drink tea with me on Wednesday the 15 May very early.
If you  can join them it will give me much pleasure.
Very truly yours, C. Babbage.

The estimate for each lot is $3,000-5,000.

Update: Lot 7 sold for $8,960 inc. premium, nearly three times its low estimate while Lot 8 sold for $53,760 inc. premium, that is over seventeen times its low estimate.

Moving into the 20th Century we find published works of seminal importance. Lot 24 has an estimate of  $30,000-50,000 and relates to Alan Turing's "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem". It comprises the complete volume of the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society in which it appeared in 1936 together with two further journals, one from 1937 containing "On Computable Numbers... A Correction" and the other from 1939 containing "Systems of logic based on ordinals"

Update: Lot 24 sold for $56,320 inc. premium

The next lot is another bound volume, Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Volume 57,1938. It  include's Claude Shannon's "Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" and has an estimate of  $10,000-15,000.

Update: Lot 24 sold for $38,400 inc. premium

Turning to hardware fast forward to around 1972 and as Lot 31 there's a Blue Box used for "phone phreaking". If this is unfamiliar to you see Woz and Jobs - The Blue Box Days, which explains why building this phone phreaking device was pivotal in the foundation of Apple. The one in Boham's 2020 History of Science and Technology sale, see Computer History Under the Hammer, was built by Steve Wozniak himself, had an estimate of $4,000-6,000 and sold for $31,325 (inc. premium). This time around its from another, unknown maker and its estimate is only $1,000-2000.

Update: Lot 31 sold for $140,200 inc. premium

I can only comment wow

The highly prized Apple in this sale is Lot 33, a prototype Mackintosh used in the devlopment of demonstration software. Described as

"Extremely desirable Macintosh prototype with 5 1/4-inch "Twiggy" drive"

It includes logic board 820-0086-00, which was copyrighted in 1983, and features Mr. Macintosh, Jean-Michel Folon "Mac Man" on the edge The textured plastic case bears the Macintosh team signature molded to interior, but with only Apple logo on back panel and with Apple logo and Macintosh logo in reversed locations, as seen only on prototypes.

It also comes with 26 additional rare 5 1/4 floppy disks, including a complete set of MacPaint, MacWrite, MacSketch (MacDraw) and MacTerminal for the Twiggy Mac, Mac demonstration software written by an early software developer and LISA disks used in the development of Mac software. Its status as: 

A rare suite of development software from the earliest days of Macintosh

justifies its estimate of $80,000-120,000, the most expensive item in the sale.

Update: Lot 33 sold for $83,050 inc. premium, i.e the winning  bid was below its low estimate.

As I reported, the Apple Lisa sold in the recent Christie's auction of Paul Allen's historic computers fetched $882,000, 44 times its estimate of $20,000-30,000 a result which reflects its prestigious provenance. The one in the Bonham sale, Lot 37,  has an estimate of $5,000-7,000 and, while it comes with its original box, has has a less glamorous history. It is a Lisa 2/10 and clearly one of the models that fell into the hands of the Sun Remarketing company which purchased Apple's back stock of Lisa 2/10s and upgraded them with an 800K floppy drive and its updated version of MacWorks XL, MacWorks Plus. These machines were on sale until 1989 after which the the remaining units were reportedly sent to a landfill in Logan, Utah. 

Update: Lot 37 remained unsold so no bid reached its reserve.

If you are interested you need to register to bid and the auction ends from 12:00 EDT on Wednesday, 23 October 2024, each successive lot 2 minutes later than the previous one. You can expect a flurry of activity as the deadline approaches. This report will be updated in due course with the results.

More Information

Bonham's Online Auction

Related Articles 

Computer History Under the Hammer

Woz and Jobs - The Blue Box Days

Steve Wozniak - Electronics Genius

The Mac

Paul Allen's Living Computers Sold For Record Prices

Paul Allen's Historic Computers Under the Hammer

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