Paul Allen's computer collection auctioned
Christie's has auctioned off the scientific collection of Paul Allen. The collection also includes the computers that led to Microsoft's rise.
Apple Lisa 1
(Image: Christie's, The History of Computing from the Paul G. Allen Collection)
Auction house Christie's has auctioned off the scientific collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It includes letters, illustrations and the computers that made the rise of Microsoft possible. At 882,000 US dollars, Apple's Lisa, valued at 30,000 dollars, was the superstar of the auction. The "German" contribution, a PDP-10 from DEC, went under the hammer for 189,000 dollars.
Several partial auctions
Paul G. Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, collected guitars, pictures, yachts and the computers, magazines and manuals that helped him in his legendary career with Microsoft. All of this was displayed in a "Living Computer Museum" in Seattle, which could no longer be financed after his death, unlike Allen's collection of Jimi Hendrix guitars. It was moved to the "Experience Music Museum", now the "Museum of Pop Culture", which was founded by Allen.
What Allen had collected was now auctioned off at Christie's in New York in several partial auctions, two of which were organized as online auctions. There was an auction of science fiction illustrations and an auction of computers, manuals and magazines.
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Among other materials in a third auction was a copy of the famous letter that Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard wrote to US President Roosevelt to warn him that Hitler's Germany could build an atomic bomb. The letter achieved a record bid of 3,922,000 US dollars, the highest sum for an Einstein letter.
In total, the auctions realized 16.8 million dollars, of which the computers collected by Allen played a major part. In addition to Apple's Lisa, the auction achieved the highest price paid for a DEC computer with a DEC PDP-10, which fetched 189,000 dollars. This computer was once operated in Kiel and was restored to working order at great expense by Paul Allen.
The PDP-10 played an important role in the history of Microsoft. Bill Gates and Paul Allen used such a computer to write a Basic version for the announced Altair 8800 computer from MITS with the help of an emulator. Allen himself flew to Albuquerque to MITS to demonstrate Basic. The Micro-Kids then founded their company Micro-Soft there.
(anw)
