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Einstein's manuscript goes unsold
Theory of relativity document equals not enough bucks
March 17, 1996
Web posted at: 3:20 p.m. ESTNEW YORK (CNN) -- Albert Einstein's handwritten manuscript on the theory of relativity failed to sell at Sotheby's auction house Saturday -- demonstrating that although time may not be absolute, money definitely is.
The problem was not that no one wanted the 72-page manuscript. In fact, bidders were willing to pay more than twice the amount that was paid for it in 1987. It's just that the owner wanted even more than that. Auctioneer David Redden started the bidding at $2 million, but gave up at $3.3 million, well below the undisclosed minimum price set by the seller and Sotheby's.
Sotheby's had reportedly hoped to sell the manuscript, written in German in 1912, at somewhere between $4 million and $6 million.
The manuscript sold in 1987 for $1.2 million to an anonymous buyer, setting a record for manuscripts sold in the United States.
"I am disappointed," said Redden, the auction house's senior vice president in charge of books and manuscripts.
The manuscript is the earliest surviving document of Einstein's theory of relativity E=mc2 -- energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.
The theory changed the way we study physics by demonstrating that time is not absolute and that mass and energy are equivalent.
The manuscript's pages are littered with corrections, additions and deletions, as well as diagrams and formulas. The manuscript even includes a version of Einstein's theory of relativity with an L, for light, crossed out.
The document's publication was delayed by World War I. After the war, Einstein thought the material was outdated and let his publisher keep it.
The seller in 1987 was an American family that received the manuscript from Einstein. The buyer was a private collector, and both were anonymous.
The most anyone has ever paid for a manuscript is $30.8 million, which was a Leonardo da Vinci manuscript purchased in 1994 by Microsoft's Bill Gates.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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