A supercomputer from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen sold for $1.02 million Tuesday afternoon at Christie’s, setting the all-time record for a computer sold in an auction.
The Cray-1 Supercomputer, designed by Seymour Cray of Cray Research, had an original price tag of $8 million ($46.7 million in today's dollars) upon its 1975 announcement. The pre-sale estimate for the lot was set between $200,000 and $300,000.
The auction featured a back-and-forth battle between two bidders over the phone that lasted 10 minutes.
Beloved by computer enthusiasts for its unique aesthetic, the machine represented a watershed moment in computing innovation, offering 160 million FLOPS — the fasted computer in the world at the time. Just eight units were ever build, with the Christie’s example decommissioned for use as a sales model, representing one of less than 20 to survive today.
"It's definitely a record-setting price," said Ryan Schiff, vice president of the Maryland Technology Museum, which has two Cray-1s. "It's a hard thing to sell because it's so big."
Schiff said the computer weighs 5 tons with the cards and as little as 2 tons without them.
This is the first time one of these computers has ever come to public auction.
Cray-1s are on display in technology museums around the world, including the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom, the Swedish Museum of Science and Technology and the Computer History Museum in California.
The Cray-1 has been cited as instrumental in modeling weather phenomena.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.