Never far from technology in Rome, I am especially interested where the modern meets the ancient kind: in a report on the eagerly-awaited Metro Linea "C", La Repubblica (15.02.05) dutifully highlights the archaeology encountered along the way.

Not least, I have been fascinated by the high-profile sale of historical technology at Christie's, New York, on February 23rd: The Origins of Cyberspace: A Library on the History of Computing, Networking & Telecommunications

http://www.christies.com/promos/feb05/1484/overview.asp

The auction material has been touring; some important lots made a preview appearance at Stanford this week. The Cyberspace Library - which will be sold in one lot if such a buyer appears - is the impressive collection of Californian manuscript dealer and historian, Jeremy Norman, http://www.historyofscience.com . The site explains: " What makes the Origins of Cyberspace so special is that it goes to the very beginning of the developments that led to the modern digital world. The goal of collectors in the history of science and technology has always been to collect the key documents that represent epochal discoveries. That is what Jeremy achieved with this library. "

My own modest link to this event is a book I wrote a few years back called "Artifacts: an archaeologist's year in Silicon Valley" (MIT Press, 2001) in which I discussed the growth of the computer history industry, vintage technology, collectors - http://www.vintage.org - and surveyed the evidence left by the dot.com boom and crash.

I kicked off my research in San Jose in January of 2000, but one of the key events I attended was cross-country, a sale of technology at a small country auction room at Bolton, a few miles from Boston.

It's an unusual route from rural Mass. to Manhattan. Most of the people at the Skinner's Sale Room that bright April day were members of the the "Music Box Society", according to their badges. The atmosphere was friendly and homespun: cakes and coffee, easy chat.

One of Skinner's specialities is technology - http://www.skinnerinc.com/content/pastauctions.asp?fam=15 - but it tends to be of the kind more familiar to science museums, rather than computer museums.

The lots were ranked chronologically, from 19th century automata and singing birds, to fairground attractions, strength-testing gear, early electrical equipment. At the end of the day, just a few of us were left in the saleroom, waiting for a few lots of manuscripts and artifacts. These formed part of the personal property of J.Presper-Eckert, the early computer pioneer. He and his colleague, John Mauchly, devloped the ENIAC. One of its vast computer parts was the star item in the Bolton sale (I later traced the buyer to Seattle, the Microsoft pioneer, Nathan Myhrvold. He kindly let me see it again in his amazing old tech collection).

Other artifacts included Eckert's slide rule, and his tool kit, and other sundry items about which his widowed wife had contacted Skinner's auctioneer, George Glastris. Jeremy Norman was there, hoping to add to his cyber library, and an academic from Michigan, who had hoped to buy Eckert's tool-kit as a souvenir of an interview with him years before. (Ironically, I can't upload my jpeg of the slide rule just now, so here it is unedited, via cellphone, from a copy of "Artifacts"...).

Glastris had been acting on a hunch: his sale of early tech, however small, could be the start of something. He was right. Five years later, Eckert's artifacts and manuscripts are a major draw in the Christie's sale which, marks less a high-end auction than a transformation: vintage cyber tech is a new arthouse phenomenon.

Just one Christie's lot alone - no. 255 - features nearly 300 Eckert items, including early photographs, working papers, typescripts, brochures, books, awards, and certificates. The estimate for that one is 20,000 - 30,000 U.S. dollars.

And as we wait for the prices, Silicon Valley columnist, Mike Cassidy, is having a field day:

"So Christie's, auctioneer to the really rich, is getting ready to sell off the treasures of the ancient geeks.

Yep, computer books and documents -- old books and documents, going back to when people were first thinking about what a computer might be, let alone how one might work. Truckloads of deep thinking on calculating and computing over the past 400 years and a few quirky tech trinkets to boot. All worth a cool million..." (Mercury News, 11 Feb 2005) .

NB update at http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/ChristineFinn/27