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Steve Jobs' Atari memo sells for $27,500

Steve Jobs' Atari memo sold for $27,500 at its Sotheby's auction, just shy of twice its estimated worth.

The handwritten memo was jotted in 1974 by then-19-year-old Jobs, who described changes Atari could make to its World Cup Soccer coin arcade game to make it more fun and functional.

Jobs worked nights at Atari for a brief time in 1974, employing Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to help whittle down the hardware required for a prototype of a single-player version of Pong, the game that would go on to become Breakout. Jobs would leave Atari that summer to travel … Read more

Photography may be older than you think

For years now, it generally has been accepted that the earliest known photographs made using easily repeatable techniques (photogenic drawings) were made about 1839. Some photographs had been made earlier, but they required extremely long exposures and were considered impractical. However, the world of photography might soon be turned on its head if a photogenic drawing that was recently removed from auction at Sotheby's turns out to have been made in 1802, as one photographic historian thinks it might.

David Schonauer, editor of American Photo magazine, has a detailed account of the story on the State of the Art … Read more