ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 18, 1996 TAG: 9603180069
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press
Albert Einstein's handwritten manuscript on the theory of relativity failed to sell at auction Saturday, as bids fell short of the secret minimum selling price.
Sotheby's had hoped to sell the 72-page manuscript, written in German in 1912, for $4 million to $6 million. The first time the manuscript came up for auction, in 1987, it sold for $1.2 million, setting a record for any manuscript sold in America.
Auctioneer David Redden, after starting the bidding at $2 million, gave up at $3.3 million, below the undisclosed minimum price set by the seller and Sotheby's.
The yellowing pages are riddled with corrections, additions and deletions, diagrams and formulas. The equation E mc2 - energy equals mass times the speed of light squared - appears in several different forms. The famous equation changed physics by demonstrating that time was not absolute and that mass and energy were equivalent.
The highest price ever paid for a manuscript is $30.8 million for a manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci bought by Microsoft mogul Bill Gates in 1994.
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