USA/FILE: Apple Computer's founding document, signed by Steve Jobs and his two other original partners in 1976, leads Sotheby's upcoming Fine Books and Manuscripts sale

Record ID: 183975

  • Title: USA/FILE: Apple Computer's founding document, signed by Steve Jobs and his two other original partners in 1976, leads Sotheby's upcoming Fine Books and Manuscripts sale
  • Date: 9th December 2011
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) RICHARD AUSTIN, HEAD OF BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS, SOTHEBY'S, SAYING: "Wonderful things always sell and there is a number of wonderful, unique things in this sale. So in spite of any economic concerns there is material that we expect to do very well."
  • Embargoed: 24th December 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Science / Technology
  • Reuters ID: LVA5O8AONN0RR1CWYHB7HLWJX6HN
  • Story Text: The contract that established Apple as a corporate entity in 1976 and another document, signed 11 days later, that removed one of the partners are expected to fetch up to $150,000 (USD) when they are auctioned next week by Sotheby's.
    The December 13 auction of books and manuscripts will also include the first letter from a U.S. president to Congress, a set of cartoons from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and a telegram announcing the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
    But the sale of the Apple Inc contract, available several months after the death of co-founder Steve Jobs in October, is expected to be the biggest draw.
    "He is really along the same lines as an Edison or Ford. This is someone that transformed American life and life worldwide through technology," said Richard Austin, head of Sotheby's Book and Manuscripts department.
    The contract establishes the Apple Computer Company and states that Jobs and Steve Wozniak will each be given 45 percent of Apple's shares. Ronald Wayne, who drafted the contract, was given 10 percent.
    But within days, Wayne had decided not be become involved with the fledgling technology company. Wayne was paid $800, and later another $1,500, and was released from the contract.
    "Wayne decided that this was going to be too much work," said Austin. "These guys were...quite a bit younger than he was and the energy was a little too much and he decided to pull out of it. So he obviously had no idea what Apple was going to become."
    His 10 percent share would today be worth $2 billion.
    Jobs left Apple in 1984 following a power struggle with the company's board of directors but returned to the company in 1996. He would become the central figure in transforming Apple into one of the world's largest and most envied companies.
    Wayne sold the documents to a private collector in 1994.
    It was not immediately known if Apple was interested in bidding on the document.
    A 1944 letter from Albert Einstein, where he remarks to a friend on the progress of the Second World War and corrects the record to say his manuscript on relativity has not been destroyed by the Nazis, is expected to fetch at least $60,000.
    A 1789 letter from the first U.S. President George Washington to the House of Representatives, the first letter from the presidency to another branch of government, is also in the sale and expected to sell for $300,000 to $500,000.
    Despite the sometimes acrimonious relationship between the presidency and Congress over the years, this letter shows Washington expressing his wish to try to start the country off with good relations between the two branches of government.
    "It was written right after his inauguration and one of the most striking things about it is he discusses his wanting to cooperate with this other branch of government. So he's writing to the House of Representative and talking about, with passionate zeal, wanting to work with them and their wisdom to lead the country," said Austin.
    2012 will mark the centennial of the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic. The Sotheby's sale has a rare and tragic document in which the representative of the White Star Lines on the fatal voyage, Bruce Ismay, telegraphs his home office in New York from the steamship RMS Carpathia, which had just saved him and countless others survivors, indicating that the Titanic had struck and iceberg and sunk, with great loss of life.
    Austin said the incident and guilt associated with it weighed on Ismay for the rest of his life.
    "On the Carpathia he apparently just stayed in his room the entire time and after he got back to New York and resumed sort of normal life, he was obviously completely shattered by the experience of being on the Titanic. This is a ship that his cruise line that he was an officer of was responsible for, and it was a terrible disaster and he never really recovered. He basically became a recluse," said Austin.
    The set of eight telegrams from Ismay is expected to fetch upwards of $80,000.
    A rare manuscript notebook by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore is expected to sell for between $150,000 and $250,000. The 152 pages of drafts of songs and poems was written in 1928 and is a very rare item and Sotheby's claims no such work by Tagore has ever appeared at auction.
    Tagore is the first Asian Nobel laureate, garnering the prize in 1913.
    Austin said he expects the sale to do well, as rare documents represent a more tangible possession for investors to own than shares of stock.
    "Wonderful things always sell and there is a number of wonderful, unique things in this sale. So in spite of any economic concerns there is material that we expect to do very well."
    The sale also includes a lot that includes an edition of the first Playboy magazine from October of 1953, complete with a signature by founder Hugh Hefner, and featuring Marilyn Monroe on the cover. Also in the Hefner lot are cartoons he wrote on scraps of paper to his childhood friend Jane Borson Sellers.
    Sotheby's Fine Book and Manuscripts sale takes place in New York on December 13th.
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