Christie’s – WindowsTechs.com

Get set for the beatification of the original computer mouse

Posted on August 26, 2024 by Mike Hanlon

Douglas Engelbart demonstrates the computer mouse for the first time on 9 December, 1968. In his left hand is a coding keyset. The Engelbart/SRI concept helped change the world and one of the original first production prototypes looks set to recalibrate auction records on 10 September 2024

The computer mouse was one of those ideas that changed the world. It was such an intuitive and easy way to instruct a computer, that widespread global adoption followed and the impact of the humble computer mouse on society has been gargantuan. We’re just about to see how much the world recognises it.

Category: Collectibles, Lifestyle

Tags: Mouse, Computers, Auction, Christie’s, Paul G. Allen, History

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Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project report goes to auction

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Mike Hanlon

The Manhattan_Project document is dated 1 July 1945 and entitled

One of the world’s most significant historic documents will sell at public auction on the March 14. “Atomic Bombs,” written just weeks before the first such weapons dropped on Japan, records a researcher’s-eye view of the Manhattan Project.

Category: Collectibles, Lifestyle

Tags: RR Auction, Christie’s, Nuclear weapons

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Breaking: “bookfind of the century” sells for $2.23 million

Posted on February 2, 2024 by Mike Hanlon

Purchased cheaply at auction as a second edition with extensive Latin

In 2007 a retired Canadian doctor paid €13,200 (USD $14,256) for a well-used second edition of Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica (1555), one of the most influential books in history. Only 150 copies are known. The book had been in the hands of collectors for more than four centuries and had extensive latin annotations by an unknown hand.

Category: Collectibles, Lifestyle

Tags: De humani corporis fabrica, Andreas Vesalius, Christie’s, Auction

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Champlain’s adventures now world’s second-most expensive travel book

Posted on February 2, 2024 by Mike Hanlon

Controversial 16th Century adventurer Samuel de Champlain penned two of history’s most captivating travel books, chronicling his exploration and mapping of much of the North American continent and his founding of New France.

Category: Collectibles, Lifestyle

Tags: Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Samuel de Champlain

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Armour museum’s helmet auction rewrites the record books

Posted on February 1, 2024 by Mike Hanlon

The first sale of the Mougins Museum's collection of Arms and Armour saw seven of the top 20 most valuable military helmets change hands inside a few hours .

People have been collecting helmets for thousands of years, with the finest specimens either closely held or having long ago gone to museums … so when the world’s finest private collection sold at Christie’s this week, it rewrote the record books with seven of the top 20 prices of all-time.

Category: Collectibles, Lifestyle

Tags: Museum, Christie’s, Helmet

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Pictorial: The Bobins Collection of the world’s best eye-witness illustration

Posted on July 9, 2023 by Mike Hanlon

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Rampant technological progress has teleported humanity from ignorance to understanding in an astonishingly short time. It is exactly 200 years ago that photography was emerging from the mind of French inventor Nicéphore Niépce onto bitumen-coated pewter plates, and for the first time, we could see a picture-perfect representation of what far-away things and events looked like. This story is about the best of the period before photography became mainstream, when human illustration was all we had.

Category: Collectibles, Lifestyle

Tags: Christie’s

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Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo 11 jacket smashes auction records

Posted on July 27, 2022 by Mike Hanlon

Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr. wearing the jacket that sold yesterday for $2.77 million. Aldrin is pictured inside the Apollo 11 Lunar Module during the lunar landing mission. The picture was taken by Neil Armstrong, just prior to the landing on 20 July 1969.

Sotheby’s sold the jacket worn to the Moon by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin yesterday, smashing all sorts of auction records with a final price of US$2,772,500.

Category: Collectibles, Lifestyle

Tags: Most-Expensive, Auction, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Heritage Auctions

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The highlights of the 2021 science, sci-fi and technology auction year

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Mike Hanlon

This is the second part of a two-part overview of the 2021 auction year – a year where investors channeled more of their wealth into “investments of passion” than ever before.

Category: Collectibles, Lifestyle

Tags: Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Propstore, University Archives (Auction House), Bonhams, Heritage Auctions, Fonsie Mealey, Ketterer Kunst, Aristotle, mario bros., RR Auction, Marc van de Wiele Auctions, Albert Einstein, Doyle New York, Malling-Hansen “Writing Ball”, Gregor Mendel, Hakes Auctions, Boba Fett, star wars, Stormtrooper Helmet, Nintendo, Thomas Malthus, Superman, René Descartes, Matteo Ricci , Adam Smith, Steve Jobs, steve wosniak, Samuel de Champlain, Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, N64 Nintendo, Abraham Ortelius, Star Trek, Andy Warhol, Battle of Goliad, Resident Evil, Nobel prizes, John James Audubon, The Birds of America, Enigma Machine, Euclid, Lightsabers, Copernicus, Mark Catesby, Apple-1 Computer, Back to the Future, Triceratops, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, Ptolemy, Johannes Kepler, Apollo Guidance Computer, The North American Indian

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Top 100 highlights of the 2021 auction year

Posted on January 14, 2022 by Mike Hanlon

Our annual highlights of the auction year reached a crescendo in this post-2021 coverage - the most explosive growth, the most ridiculous lots, and dozens of examples of the most expensive items in history ... not to mention the most bizarre lots we've yet seen. The most intriguing of them all was the sale by tender of (most of) the cars from the 2015 movie, “Mad Max: Fury Road.”