>He also misses the point. Except for nerds like us, nobody knows who any
>of the early computer pioneers were/are (with the exception of perhaps
>Thomas Watson Sr/Jr.) If we're talking about papers from Einstein,
>Edison, Bell, etc., those are universally (at least in the West)
>acknolwedged because they affected society directly and at a much larger
>scale. But the things that Babbage, Hopper, Eckert, Mauchley did do not
>compare in terms of notoriety and direct impact.
>
>He is correct that these people *should* be more well known, but they
>aren't, and therefore that's why the values he is assigning are
>unjustifiable.
But that doesn't mean they won't fetch the prices, or higher that are set
on them.
I'm actually very curious to see how this turns out.
I don't know your's, or anyone else's on the list financial status... I'm
poor, but I'm a volunteer fireman who covers two of the richest towns in
the area (and two of the richest in the county, although I don't know
exactly where they lie on the scale). I know of many MANY people with
absurd amounts of money (alas, none are good friends).
To them, they may not know who the person is, but if they are told "hey,
this person wrote a paper, and they are important to the history of
computers, and we are selling a copy of his paper", they may pay huge
sums by our standards. Not because they know who the person is, or even
care who they are... but simply because Christie's said it was worth
something.
These are people that send others out to do their grocery shopping, not
because they have to or are too busy to do it themselves, but because
they *can*. If they want the latest fashions from Paris, they go to Paris
and buy them. Not by taking a vacation to Paris... but by simply taking
their personal jet and making it a day trip. These are the same types of
people that are shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to reserve
seats on Virgin Atlantic's space ship (the one that not only hasn't been
built yet, but lacks a solid plan on how and when it will be built).
Money is meaningless to them.
I really will not be surprised if the auction goes off nicely by
Christie's standards.
-chris
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Received on Thu Feb 17 2005 - 13:25:50 GMT