A plethora of notable early computers from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen are to be put up for auction.
Auction house Christie's is putting up hundreds of items across three sales collectively known as Gen One – Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection.
Allen co-founded Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975. He died in 2018 aged 65.
As well as several early supercomputers and mainframes, the collection includes early computers from the likes of IBM, Control Data Corporation (CDC), and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), as well as early Apple computers and a WW2 Enigma cipher machine.
Amongst the collection is a Cray-1 supercomputer. Launched with a price tag of around $8 million back in 1975, this 160-megaflop machine was the most powerful supercomputer available on the market at the time. Christie's noted only around 80 were ever built, and this individual system was decommissioned and used as a sale model for Cray. It is thought only 17 survive today, and this is the first to come to auction; the auction estimate is $150,000-200,000.
The collection also includes a Cray-2 supercomputer from 1985. Like its predecessor, the Cray system featured the iconic cylindrical C-shape. At the time, $16 million would get you 1.9 gigaflops of compute. Only 25 were sold, and three of this higher memory specification. Sold to REI, this specific system is believed to be the longest-running Cray-2, only being shut down in 1999. The auction estimate is $250,000-350,000.
The collection also includes a CDC 6500 supercomputer from 1967. Launched with a price tag of $8 million, it was the first computer to achieve 1 million instructions per second. The auction estimate is $200,000-300,000.
Several mainframes are also being put up for auction. These include a Xerox Sigma 9 from 1970; a DEC PDP10 KA10 and KI10 from 1968 and 1974 respectively; and an IBM 7090 from 1959.
Other systems on offer include a CDC 160-A Desk Computer from 1960 and a CDC DD60A from 1971; an IBM 650 Magnetic Drum system from 1953 and a System 360 Model 91 from 1966; a Xerox Alto II XM from 1973; a Univac 1004 card processor from 1960, a DEC PDP-5 Minicomputer from 1963, PDP-8 from 1965, LINC-8 from 1966, and PDP-7A from 1967; a Burroughs L5000 Calculating Marchin from 1973; and a Bendix g-15D from 1956.
Despite his involvement, Allen’s collection includes an Apple-1 computer, estimated to be worth $300,000-500,000; an Apple One personal computer from the office to Steve Jobs with a value of $500,000-800,000; an Apple Lisa 1; and a Next Computer Nextcube from 1988.
Other computers included in the auction include a MITS Altair 8800 Microcomputer, a One Laptop Per Child device, Hewlett-Packard 1000 A-Series and 2100S microcomputers, a Kenbak-1 Digital Computer, Paul Allen’s person Compaq PC, a MARK-8 hobbyist computer, and a Microsoft Surface Tabletop (also known as a Pixelsense).
The rest of the collection includes Microsoft memos, science fiction artwork, a luncheon menu from the Titanic, a meteorite, a letter to President Roosevelt from Albert Einstein warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons, and a space suit worn by the astronaut Ed White in 1965.
In 2022, a sale of Allen’s art collection, which included works from Botticelli and Francis Bacon, achieved $1.5 billion in one evening.
