Quite the auction closing in a few days at Christie's:
Eureka! Scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century
Eureka! is a journey through the scientific and technological breakthroughs that have formed the modern world, and the brilliant minds that lay behind them. Browse and bid on Edison’s designs for the lightbulb, a World War 2 Enigma Machine, property from the estate of the late Professor Stephen Hawking, or the Nobel Prize medal awarded for the invention of IVF.
My choice would be these: Tesla patents : an archive of inventive genius
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)
Collection of 50 original patents. Washington DC: Norris-Peters Co. for the USPTO, 1886-1914. In a modern black morocco-backed cloth clamshell box.
Fifty separate patents, each of 3-7 pages with at least one drawing with schematics. The vast majority has an annotated note in a contemporary hand on the front blank leaf indicating the patent holder (Tesla), the patent number, and often the date the application was filed, date of issuance and date of expiration. Some have underlining in the text.
An extraordinary collection of Tesla’s patents, including those for the invention of radio (disputed by Marconi), the ‘Tesla coil’ and power transmissions systems, remote-controlled devices, AC motors, generators, incandescent and arc-lighting, transformers, and many others.
These are the original copies sent from the US Patent Office back to Tesla's attorneys. Tesla's patent for the invention of radio was upheld by the United States Supreme Court - Tesla publically demonstrated working radio several years before Marconi ever sent the dots across the Atlantic Ocean.
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