Christie’s suspends Paris sale of world’s ‘first calculator’
By AFP
November 19, 2025
The sale was suspended afer a last minute court ruling
- Copyright AFP/File STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN
Christie’s said Wednesday it was suspending the Paris auction of one of just a handful of examples of the world’s first calculating machine, developed by French mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal in 1642.
The auction of “La Pascaline” had been scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, but late on Tuesday a Paris court suspended authorisation for export — meaning buyers would not be able to take it abroad.
This example is one of only nine still existing and the only one believed to be in private hands — others are held in museums.
Christie’s had dubbed the box, decorated with ebony, as “the most important scientific instrument ever offered at auction” and it had been expected to fetch 2-3 million euros.
The auction house had described the machine as “nothing less than the first attempt in history to substitute the work of a machine for that of the human mind”.
It said it had halted the sale at the instructions of the piece’s owner, after the Paris administrative court suspended an export authorisation in a provisional ruling.
The sale, part of an auction of the library of late collector Leon Parce, would be suspended pending the final decision by the court, Christie’s said.
“Pending the final judgment, given the provisional nature of this decision and in accordance with the instructions of its client, Christie’s is suspending the sale of La Pascaline,” it told AFP.
Scientists and researchers had urgently appealed to the administrative court to block the potential export of the machine.
They want the instrument to be classified as a “national treasure”.
The culture ministry said an export certificate had been issued in May following standard procedures.
Two experts — one from the National Centre of Arts and Crafts (CNAM) and the other from the Louvre Museum — approved the decision, the ministry said.
Blaise Pascal was only 19 when he developed the machine to help his father, who was in charge of a court that was tasked with restoring order to tax revenue collections in northern France, Christie’s said.
“To simplify these tasks, Blaise Pascal designed calculating machines that, for the first time in history, allowed for the mechanisation of mental calculation,” it said.
The final court decision could take several months.
Christie’s said Wednesday it was suspending the Paris auction of one of just a handful of examples of the world’s first calculating machine, developed by French mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal in 1642.
The auction of “La Pascaline” had been scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, but late on Tuesday a Paris court suspended authorisation for export — meaning buyers would not be able to take it abroad.
This example is one of only nine still existing and the only one believed to be in private hands — others are held in museums.
Christie’s had dubbed the box, decorated with ebony, as “the most important scientific instrument ever offered at auction” and it had been expected to fetch 2-3 million euros.
The auction house had described the machine as “nothing less than the first attempt in history to substitute the work of a machine for that of the human mind”.
It said it had halted the sale at the instructions of the piece’s owner, after the Paris administrative court suspended an export authorisation in a provisional ruling.
The sale, part of an auction of the library of late collector Leon Parce, would be suspended pending the final decision by the court, Christie’s said.
“Pending the final judgment, given the provisional nature of this decision and in accordance with the instructions of its client, Christie’s is suspending the sale of La Pascaline,” it told AFP.
Scientists and researchers had urgently appealed to the administrative court to block the potential export of the machine.
They want the instrument to be classified as a “national treasure”.
The culture ministry said an export certificate had been issued in May following standard procedures.
Two experts — one from the National Centre of Arts and Crafts (CNAM) and the other from the Louvre Museum — approved the decision, the ministry said.
Blaise Pascal was only 19 when he developed the machine to help his father, who was in charge of a court that was tasked with restoring order to tax revenue collections in northern France, Christie’s said.
“To simplify these tasks, Blaise Pascal designed calculating machines that, for the first time in history, allowed for the mechanisation of mental calculation,” it said.
The final court decision could take several months.
By AFP
November 18, 2025
The S-shaped copper sculpture "Kryptos" has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia -
Copyright AFP/File Indranil MUKHERJEE
Victoria LAVELLE
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by “Kryptos.”
The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far.
Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. The sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging $50 for each response.
In August, Sanborn announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4 as he no longer had the “physical, mental or financial resources” to maintain the code.
In a sign of wide interest in Kryptos, which has inspired cultural figures including “The Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown, the code’s solution is on course to fetch more than $240,000 in a sale due to end this Thursday.
So when two friends announced in October they had uncovered the last message held by Kryptos (“hidden” in ancient Greek), it invoked fury and concern from the auction house and Sanborn.
Jarett Kobek, a writer from Los Angeles, told AFP how the pair came across the code after he noticed a reference to Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, where Sanborn held his archives, in the auction catalog.
He asked his friend Richard Byrne, who is based in the US capital, to take a look through the files.
“I took images of all the coding stuff in the files,” said Richard Byrne, a journalist and playwright.
A few hours later, Kobek called him and said “Hey, you might have found something interesting,” he recalled.
Using Byrne’s photos and clues previously shared by Sanborn, Kobek unraveled the K4 message.
– Legal threats –
The two men decided to write to Sanborn to share their discovery — but instead of congratulations, they were met by alarm.
Sanborn, the pair said, asked them to sign non-disclosure agreements in exchange for a share of the money raised in the auction.
“The NDA is a total non-starter,” Kobek said. “You are running an auction where what you are selling is intellectual property exclusivity.”
“If I take money from that sale, I feel like this would almost certainly make me party to fraud.”
They later went public with their discovery in a New York Times piece in October.
Sanborn, explaining his communication with the men, wrote in a public letter: “I was trying to save K4 from disclosure by any means possible. I had succeeded for 35 years after all.”
Kobek said the pair were keen to avoid disrupting the K4 auction.
“The last thing anyone wants to do is take money from an 80-year-old artist,” he said.
Even if they have no intention of revealing the code’s solution, the two men say the auction house has sent them cease-and-desist letters.
Sanborn has acknowledged his error in archiving the crucial information — but he downplayed the discovery.
He said the pair had “found and photographed five pieces of scrambled texts that I had accidentally placed in the archive boxes all those years ago.”
“The scrambled plain text was found, but without the coding method or the key. This is a very important distinction,” he separately told a news conference in November.
And, he added, the discovery does not end the mystery of Kryptos.
K5, with a “similar but not identical” coding system to K4, is also to be released after the current auction sale
Victoria LAVELLE
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by “Kryptos.”
The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far.
Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. The sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging $50 for each response.
In August, Sanborn announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4 as he no longer had the “physical, mental or financial resources” to maintain the code.
In a sign of wide interest in Kryptos, which has inspired cultural figures including “The Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown, the code’s solution is on course to fetch more than $240,000 in a sale due to end this Thursday.
So when two friends announced in October they had uncovered the last message held by Kryptos (“hidden” in ancient Greek), it invoked fury and concern from the auction house and Sanborn.
Jarett Kobek, a writer from Los Angeles, told AFP how the pair came across the code after he noticed a reference to Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, where Sanborn held his archives, in the auction catalog.
He asked his friend Richard Byrne, who is based in the US capital, to take a look through the files.
“I took images of all the coding stuff in the files,” said Richard Byrne, a journalist and playwright.
A few hours later, Kobek called him and said “Hey, you might have found something interesting,” he recalled.
Using Byrne’s photos and clues previously shared by Sanborn, Kobek unraveled the K4 message.
– Legal threats –
The two men decided to write to Sanborn to share their discovery — but instead of congratulations, they were met by alarm.
Sanborn, the pair said, asked them to sign non-disclosure agreements in exchange for a share of the money raised in the auction.
“The NDA is a total non-starter,” Kobek said. “You are running an auction where what you are selling is intellectual property exclusivity.”
“If I take money from that sale, I feel like this would almost certainly make me party to fraud.”
They later went public with their discovery in a New York Times piece in October.
Sanborn, explaining his communication with the men, wrote in a public letter: “I was trying to save K4 from disclosure by any means possible. I had succeeded for 35 years after all.”
Kobek said the pair were keen to avoid disrupting the K4 auction.
“The last thing anyone wants to do is take money from an 80-year-old artist,” he said.
Even if they have no intention of revealing the code’s solution, the two men say the auction house has sent them cease-and-desist letters.
Sanborn has acknowledged his error in archiving the crucial information — but he downplayed the discovery.
He said the pair had “found and photographed five pieces of scrambled texts that I had accidentally placed in the archive boxes all those years ago.”
“The scrambled plain text was found, but without the coding method or the key. This is a very important distinction,” he separately told a news conference in November.
And, he added, the discovery does not end the mystery of Kryptos.
K5, with a “similar but not identical” coding system to K4, is also to be released after the current auction sale
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