That's Not Junk. That's Early Tech

摘要

Gordon bell can hardly believe what he sees when he scrolls through the online catalog for a Feb. 23 Christie's auction of computer memorabilia in New York. "Oh my God, the prices!" exclaims the Microsoft senior researcher, a big-time collector of computer-related books, documents, and other artifacts, most of which he has donated to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. One thing that catches his eye in the 355-item "Origins of Cyberspace" catalog is a first edition of a 1617 treatise by John Napier, the Scottish mathematician whose invention of logarithms was a key advance in creating the early calculators that evolved into today's computers. The auction house figures it will go for $25,000 to $35,000. "I paid $6,000 in 1982" for a similar copy, he recalls. Bell isn't the only connoisseur in a tizzy over the rising cachet and prices of computer memorabilia. Whether 17th-century mathematics books, mid-1940s documents connected with pioneering executives, or the first 1970s-era microcomputers, prices have soared in recent years.