An auction on “computer history” .. and a rare signature of Steve Jobs

Items associated with the emergence of Apple, home computers and video games are up for sale at an auction that ends on March 17.

The most important item in the auction “Steve Jobs Revolution: Engelbart, Atari and Apple” will be a check issued in July 1976 worth $3,430 to buy parts for the “Apple 1” computer, signed by the company’s founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

“This happened before they (Apple) had any investors,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of RR, which will oversee the sale.

He added: “The reason the two signed it (the check) is the agreement signed between them. Any expenditures in excess of a thousand dollars they had to agree to, and this is the evidence.”

“What makes these computers and video games so special is that they are prototypes. They are very early models that are hard to find now.”

“People from Silicon Valley, who were there when the whole computer revolution started, sent these collectibles back to us,” he concluded.

The auction includes many items associated with Jobs, including his high school photos and the application he filled out for a job at Atari.
“Steve didn’t sign a lot of things. He didn’t like to sign things. So his signatures are very rare,” Reuters quoted Stephen Levy, a journalist for Wired magazine, as saying.

The auction house said the exhibits, including a part from one of the first video game consoles “Atari Pong” and a mouse designed by Douglas Engelbart in the 1960s, help tell the story of computer history.