World's first ever Nobel Prize winning integrated circuit to be auctioned Are you a chip nerd with $2m to spare? Then you're in luck, because a historic prototype of the world's first integrated circuit is set to be auctioned at Christie's. The expensive piece of computing history was invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958 and demonstrated that an integrated circuit could be squeezed …
It does belong in a public museum, I agree 100%! So does Christies, that's why the high estimate. It's excessively hard for public institutions to purchase high dollar things directly. Politics, idiots and the politics of idiots get in the way 'who wants to see 'that', it's old crap'.
But that doesn't stop museums from wanting those things in their collections. Christies knows how that works too. So they give it a high estimate and within hours the phones of major donors are ringing. Wealthy private individuals purchase the thing, then lend it to the museum for permanent display. The tax payer is out little more than the cost of some lunches, invites to fancy parties and a few hours for the donor in the dinosaur hall with a saddle, golf clubs and a brace of Brazilian hookers.
All in all it's a nice system.
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