Incredible Science and Historical Artifacts Up for Auction

By Kelly Dickerson

The Apple-1 computer is the first personal computer model ever sold. There are only 15 working original models left.
Credit: Bonhams
A working Apple-1 computer, a window from the Manhattan Project's bomb-development site and a letter from Charles Darwin discussing the details of barnacle sex will go on sale this month at an auction of rare scientific artifacts.
The vintage Apple computer will lead off the technology section of the auction, which is sponsored by the British-owned auction house Bonhams. The Apple-1 model was the first personal computer with a single circuit board ever sold.
As of January, only 63 originals remain, and only 15 were still working as of 2000. Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen examined the model up for auction and certified that it is working and only needed minor replacement parts. It's valued at around half a million dollars. [See Photos of the Computer and Other Rare Items Up for Auction]

A viewing window from the Manhattan Project — valued at around $200,000 — is another big-ticket item at the auction. The Manhattan Project was a secret government operation during World War II designed to develop the world's first atomic bomb, and included many famous scientists like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman. The artifact comes from the project's Hanford site in Washington state, where physicists developed the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The window is about 54 inches by 36 inches (137 centimeters by 91 centimeters), with a pane of heavy leaded glass 6 in. (15 cm) thick, to protect the scientists from radiation from the atomic-bomb experiments.
A collection of astronomer George Willis Ritchey's deep-space photographs, books and telescope blueprints is also on sale. Ritchey is the co-inventor of the reflector telescope, the basic design of which is still used for most modern telescopes and observatories. Ritchey's collection is valued around half a million dollars.
The auction will also feature a natural-history collection, including an 1857 letter from Charles Darwin to a man who supposedly witnessed barnacle sex. Proportionally speaking, barnacles have the largest penis in the animal kingdom, and in the letter, Darwin says he would be "extremely much obliged" to hear the details of the act. The document is estimated to sell for between $20,000 and $30,000, according to Bonhams.
Bidding will open Oct. 22 at 1 p.m. ET at the company's New York showroom. The full catalog for the auction is now posted on Bonhams' website.
Live Science

Sold! Nobel Prize for Neutron Discovery Auctioned for $329,000

By Megan Gannon

The 1935 Nobel Prize Medal that was presented to James Chadwick for his discovery of the neutron.
Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby's

 

 

The 1935 Nobel Prize in physics that was awarded to English scientist James Chadwick for his discovery of the neutron was sold at auction this week for $329,000.
Sotheby's auction house, which handled the sale yesterday (June 3) in New York, estimated that the Nobel gold medal and its accompanying diploma would sell for between $200,000 and $400,000. Sotheby's did not release any information about the buyer. The seller was a collector of medals and coins, who bought Chadwick's Nobel gold medal and diploma from the famed physicist about 20 years ago.
With this week's auction, the seller may have been trying to strike the same fortune as Francis Crick's family. The medal awarded to Crick in 1953 for the discovery of DNA's twisted ladder shape was offered at auction last year, marking the first public sale of a Nobel Prize. With little precedent for the sale, Heritage Auctions had valued Crick's medal and diploma at $500,000. It far exceeded expectations, selling for more than $2 million.
Chadwick studied under British scientist Ernest Rutherford, who is considered the father of nuclear physics, and whose model of the atom (which was the first to show that much of its charge was concentrated in a nucleus) earned him a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1908.
Decades later, Chadwick proved the theoretically predicted existence of neutrons — electrically neutral particles in the nucleus of an atom that have slightly more mass than protons. Scientists soon understood that neutrons could be used in nuclear chain reactions to release massive amounts of energy. Chadwick, who was knighted in 1945, was involved in developing the first atomic bombs during World War II, as head of the British contingent of the Manhattan Project. He even witnessed the Trinity bomb test — the world's first nuclear explosion — on July 16, 1945, at the Alamogordo Air Base in New Mexico.
http://www.livescience.com/46092-nobel-medal-neutron-discovery-sold.html

Rare dinosaur skeleton sells for £400,000 in UK auction

 

A rare Diplodocus skeleton sells at auction in West Sussex for £400,000 on Wednesday. Nicknamed 'Misty', the dinosaur was discovered in a quarry near Wyoming in the US in 2009. The dinosaur is 17 meters long and is thought to be one of only six complete skeletons worldwide.The identity of the person who purchased the dinosaur is unknown

The Phil Naessens Show: The Masahiro Tanaka Era Begins!

http://phillipnaessens.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/the-phil-naessens-show-the-masahiro-tanaka-era-begins/

 

 

Mark Berman joins Phil to discuss the New York Yankees signing of Japanese Free Agent Masahiro Tanaka and look at some of the New York Mets signings, Phil shares some Fantasy Baseball auction values for Pitchers and Alex Hall joins Phil to discuss the Oakland A's signing of reliever Eric O'Flaherty and why the Oakland A's and other small market baseball teams seem to get no respect plus much more on today's Phil Naessens Show