I get that Museums aren't well funded but I feel like ten quid isn't enough value being returned to the owner. That owner didn't know what they had and was taken advantage of, even if it was for a good cause. I hope their name becomes part of the story of the device at least.
Yeah, I thought it sounded very ungrateful when reading: "We said 'Thank you very much, how much was it again?' She said '£9.50', so we said 'Here's a £10 note - keep the change!'"
It's like using open source as the foundation of a billion dollar business. "Thank you very much, how much was that fantastically useful library again?" "Free." "Have a nice day."
Like many collectables, the value will come with how complete and original it is and how functional. Things which are missing parts or modified can lose substantial value.
I understand your emotion but consider it from the owner's point of view. It was junk taking up space, now they have 10 quid and more space. They are quite happy. Sure that junk "might" have been valuable but if you go down that road you end up a hoarder thinking someday velvet paintings of elvis are going to be really really valuable.
She could have taken it to the local Antique store and had it evaluated, or asked the museum about it, but instead did what many do, throw it up on Ebay and see if anyone wants it. She's happy, the museum is happy, that really is all that counts here.
If I was the owner and would now see my L20 junk written about as valuable artifacts in the news, I would be pissed and angry. Solely because the buyers did not educate me but used my ignorance for their advantage. Maybe she would have simply donated the item, I sure would have. The issue is not money, it is being exploited.
I think the problem is the phrasing. "Keep the change" sounds like they exploited her ignorance and ran off with a bargain. It's just not how most people want things to be. Despite the logic of the situation, it doesn't feel right. Attributions are free.
Further, though, there are some practical considerations. If they'd shown her appreciation, future dialogue about how it got there, clues to the motor etc should be easier to develop- they obviously asked, but no reason to potentially burn any bridges.
I largely agree, but I note that we're reading the BBC's retelling of a story told to them, so we don't really have a good handle on how the transaction went down with the owner.
I have related experience with finding items to add to my DEC VAX collection. I've found equipment that would sell for a premium to one of the folks who maintain old computers for companies, and the owner has offered it up to me for a few dollars. I always tell people in that situation what we're looking at and often they are just glad to see it going to a good home rather than wasting away in their closet/basement/storereoom. Sometimes they will decide to try to sell it for more elsewhere.
In this particular case, the historical value is high, but the number of people who would pay more than 9.5 pounds for it is probably in the single digits. Remember it's only a part of a larger artifact. Further, they found it on ebay so others had the opportunity to see it and bid on it. In the past I've found that things really do find their "market" price on ebay and sometimes that is very different from what either the seller or the buyer thinks should be the market price.
Finally there is the question of "value." It would be fun and cool to have an ancient encryption device, but what is that "worth" to you? So many times I've met people who kept old computers when they were enjoying them (high value) and then discarding them after the excitement/fun has worn off. Cleaning out and disposing an in-law or relative's estate after a long life is also really useful for internalizing cash value vs sentimental value.
Really the best you can hope for is that both parties are satisfied with the transaction. This person in the story might be looking forward to visiting the artifact in a museum some day.
I'm not trying to argue that there aren't people who would exploit an imbalance of information in a market to profit at the expense of others. Hedge funds are full of people like that. I'm just saying that from what we've heard in this story, both parties seem happy with the transaction. The BBC could always follow up with a phone call to the owner and say "If you knew what it was would you have asked the museum for more money?" Only then do we have enough information to consider whether or not the museum was being exploitive.
Interestingly, I just remembered that we in Denmark have a law called "Danefæ"[0], which states that the government has claim on all found "treasure". Here you can read what is "danefæ" (i.e. claimed) http://natmus.dk/salg-og-ydelser/museumsfaglige-ydelser/dane.... As the law is mostly written with ancient, dug-up items in mind a contraption such as the one in question would not be covered. It's interesting though, how it would solve the moral dilemma.
It's surprisingly hard to find information on this in english; do the states/UK have a similar setup? (your DEC VAX collection obviously wouldn't be covered (yet))
The idea of "ignorance" here is a type of slippery slope I would argue.
Offhand it would seem that many (all?) profits made in open exchanges proceed from some knowledge advantage on the part of one party—or at least originate from a calculated risk taken in light of some knowledge.
As a 'user story'; "I work in the field of <something>-ics, and suspect that <some products|raw materials> in <some industry> will be much <more|less> available in the coming years, so I'm going to go <long|short> on related stocks."
I don't think many would say I'm obliged to inform the selling parties of my reasoning in some interest of fairness. (I'm not including the edge case of insider trading, but run of the mill, hard-earned expertise.)
And at a more mundane level of analysis, c'mon—who doesn't know to at least do some web (text & image) searching before selling off something interesting (complex, artistic, hand-crafted, etc.) that you know very little about?
I bought a music box at a garage sale for bout $10. It seemed like a good deal at the time. A few months later I noticed a label on the bottom so I did some research and discovered that the same item was selling for around $1,000 on eBay. Should I now go track the owner down and tell her that she should have asked for more money?
Counter that with the time I found a Coach trinket at another garage sale for $1.50 and I pointed out to the homeowner that an old gf had bought the same thing from the Coach store for $35. Her answer was "well, I guess you're getting a good deal then."
In the end, once the seller and buyer agrees on a price, it's hard for me to see how that's screwing someone over.
>I bought a music box at a garage sale for bout $10. It seemed like a good deal at the time. A few months later I noticed a label on the bottom so I did some research and discovered that the same item was selling for around $1,000 on eBay. Should I now go track the owner down and tell her that she should have asked for more money?
You didn't know. It was a trade among equals. This was different. That said, there are some situations where it's considered OK to rip people off. Finance works like that. But I would've thought that museums had slightly higher standards of conduct than Goldman Sachs...
There seems to be something strange with that transaction. I don't know there, but where I live, that kind of transaction would clearly be invalidated if taken to court.
At least here, for a transaction to be valid, both parties must be in the same kind of conditions, regarding to the knowledge of the thing (if one does not know what the object is, they should explain the other, not just take advantage of the situation). This was clearly not the case.
"It may also be sued annulment or amendment of legal acts when one party exploiting the need, lightness or inexperience of the other, obtained through them an obviously disproportionate and unjustified financial advantage."
Spending just a few seconds in google, it seems that it is the same in other countries:
"When anyone, exploiting the sum ignorance, notorious inexperience or extreme misery of another, obtains an excessive profit that is clearly disproportionate to what he in turn agrees, the injured party is entitled to seek rescission of the contract, and if it impossible equitable reduction obligation."
But of course, it all depends of the law of the place. If that that's OK in Essex, well... too bad for the one selling this object. And good for the museum taking advantage of that opportunity (even if it may sound a little bit unfair). At least this machine will be in good hands.
In any case, it'd be nice if they stop bragging about that.
-----
Edit: And according to wikipedia[1]:
In English Law, "unilateral mistake is where only one party to a contract is mistaken as to the terms or subject-matter. The courts will uphold such a contract unless it was determined that the non-mistaken party was aware of the mistake and tried to take advantage of the mistake"
IANAL, but in this case, I think there was obviously one party that didn't know what the object was, and another that did know and was taking advantage of the situation ("It was advertised as a telegram machine ", "keep the change" and all that).
Why not? Because he saw the article on Ebay? I don't know if this changes things, but they paid in person, they had every chance to inform the other party if it seemed so strange for them. And the fact remains, there was a party who didn't know, and another that knew and took advantage. For example, if she knew, she could have started the auction at a much higher price...
The description of the "missing motor" sounds more like the motor-transmission assembly. Since the identification plate on the motor looks standard, if they find an identical part number, it may be for the motor only. Is there any chance of getting clear pictures or the motor-transmission from numerous angles (and including all identifying marks)?
That's a special motor and drive train for the cyphering unit. Here's one with the motor.[1] The cypher unit has two selectors - the two curved mechanisms on the top front. Those are mechanical UARTs, serial to parallel converters, and they're the same design used in Teletype machines from 1924 to 1959. Those need power from a driveshaft. The same motor drives both, which is why there's a special motor with a shaft out each end and two right-angle reduction drive gearsets. That's not a standard teleprinter part.
The wheel with the black and white bars is a centrifugal governor. The speed is adjustable, and you use a special tuning fork with a shutter to calibrate the speed. This is a standard Teletype motor feature for when you can't rely on AC power line frequency.
It's still not clear if this find included the crypto unit, or just the teleprinter. If they actually found a crypto unit, this is a big deal. Those were very rare.
But one key part is still missing and volunteers are still searching for it.
"It looks like an electric motor in black casing with two shafts on each side, which drive the gears of the Lorenz machine," explains volunteer John Wetter.
Volunteers hope the public will look out for it and if all else fails are hoping someone might want to build them a new one until they find it.
If it's just a dual-shaft motor with nothing else special about it, fortunately those are widely available:
If all they found was the teleprinter, and not the crypto machine, this isn't a big deal. That is just the Lorenz version of the Teletype Model 14 tape printer, built under license. These are not that rare. I have three of the Teletype Corp version. (One is in operation right now at the Clockwork Alchemy Steampunk Convention in San Jose. Visit the Telegraph Office there today.) The crypto machine part is separate; it's a big electric-powered rotor machine, like an Enigma with more rotors. This tape printer may be special because the serial numbers match a historic crypto machine, which museum types care about.
Here's my overhaul of the Teletype Corp. version.[1] Here's a Lorenz version someone else has.[2] Here's Bletchley Park's set, with the crypto unit and the teleprinter.[3]
After I got my first Model 14, I had the paper tape they need made by a company in China. The minimum order was 500 rolls, so I sometimes sell paper tape to museums. (I tried US manufacturers first. Either they didn't want a small order, wanted a very high price, or the edge quality of the paper was so bad the tape would jam.)
From [1]: “We saw the swastika and then we noticed one of the keys was devoted to the double lightning bolt symbol of the SS.”
Now that's a Baudot/ITA2 character set variation I haven't seen. There's already USTTY, ITA2, weather symbols, fractions (⅛, ¼, ⅜, etc., for stocks), versions with £ instead of #, and versions with a pilcrow. (¶). But I've never heard of a double lightning bolt symbol.
Unicode has a single lightning bolt (Stack Overflow cannot handle this) up in the astral planes with the new emoji. But no double lightning bolt. I suppose a request for that now has to go into the Unicode consortium.
I suspect the "double lightning bolt" is just a glyph to print for end of line, for CR or LF. A tape printer doesn't do anything special for CR or LF, but some of them print something. One of my machines prints "=", and one prints an oversized comma. There's no standard for that.
The members of the National Museum of Computing might appreciate me pointing out that although they are based in Bletchley Park, they're separate from the Bletchley Park Trust who preserve all the codebreaking history and buildings.
TNMoC has some WW2 machines (most importantly Heath Robinson and Colossus) but they also have pretty much every other computer imaginable, with some of the proper historical stuff actually functional, and more BBC Micros than I've seen since school.
42 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 91.4 ms ] threadI mean if you're going to be all steampunk, at least interface with a USB-C connector and use the machine to live tweet the announcement.
She could have taken it to the local Antique store and had it evaluated, or asked the museum about it, but instead did what many do, throw it up on Ebay and see if anyone wants it. She's happy, the museum is happy, that really is all that counts here.
Further, though, there are some practical considerations. If they'd shown her appreciation, future dialogue about how it got there, clues to the motor etc should be easier to develop- they obviously asked, but no reason to potentially burn any bridges.
I have related experience with finding items to add to my DEC VAX collection. I've found equipment that would sell for a premium to one of the folks who maintain old computers for companies, and the owner has offered it up to me for a few dollars. I always tell people in that situation what we're looking at and often they are just glad to see it going to a good home rather than wasting away in their closet/basement/storereoom. Sometimes they will decide to try to sell it for more elsewhere.
In this particular case, the historical value is high, but the number of people who would pay more than 9.5 pounds for it is probably in the single digits. Remember it's only a part of a larger artifact. Further, they found it on ebay so others had the opportunity to see it and bid on it. In the past I've found that things really do find their "market" price on ebay and sometimes that is very different from what either the seller or the buyer thinks should be the market price.
Finally there is the question of "value." It would be fun and cool to have an ancient encryption device, but what is that "worth" to you? So many times I've met people who kept old computers when they were enjoying them (high value) and then discarding them after the excitement/fun has worn off. Cleaning out and disposing an in-law or relative's estate after a long life is also really useful for internalizing cash value vs sentimental value.
Really the best you can hope for is that both parties are satisfied with the transaction. This person in the story might be looking forward to visiting the artifact in a museum some day.
I'm not trying to argue that there aren't people who would exploit an imbalance of information in a market to profit at the expense of others. Hedge funds are full of people like that. I'm just saying that from what we've heard in this story, both parties seem happy with the transaction. The BBC could always follow up with a phone call to the owner and say "If you knew what it was would you have asked the museum for more money?" Only then do we have enough information to consider whether or not the museum was being exploitive.
Interestingly, I just remembered that we in Denmark have a law called "Danefæ"[0], which states that the government has claim on all found "treasure". Here you can read what is "danefæ" (i.e. claimed) http://natmus.dk/salg-og-ydelser/museumsfaglige-ydelser/dane.... As the law is mostly written with ancient, dug-up items in mind a contraption such as the one in question would not be covered. It's interesting though, how it would solve the moral dilemma.
It's surprisingly hard to find information on this in english; do the states/UK have a similar setup? (your DEC VAX collection obviously wouldn't be covered (yet))
[0] http://natmus.dk/salg-og-ydelser/museumsfaglige-ydelser/dane...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Act_1996
Offhand it would seem that many (all?) profits made in open exchanges proceed from some knowledge advantage on the part of one party—or at least originate from a calculated risk taken in light of some knowledge.
As a 'user story'; "I work in the field of <something>-ics, and suspect that <some products|raw materials> in <some industry> will be much <more|less> available in the coming years, so I'm going to go <long|short> on related stocks."
I don't think many would say I'm obliged to inform the selling parties of my reasoning in some interest of fairness. (I'm not including the edge case of insider trading, but run of the mill, hard-earned expertise.)
And at a more mundane level of analysis, c'mon—who doesn't know to at least do some web (text & image) searching before selling off something interesting (complex, artistic, hand-crafted, etc.) that you know very little about?
I bought a music box at a garage sale for bout $10. It seemed like a good deal at the time. A few months later I noticed a label on the bottom so I did some research and discovered that the same item was selling for around $1,000 on eBay. Should I now go track the owner down and tell her that she should have asked for more money?
Counter that with the time I found a Coach trinket at another garage sale for $1.50 and I pointed out to the homeowner that an old gf had bought the same thing from the Coach store for $35. Her answer was "well, I guess you're getting a good deal then."
In the end, once the seller and buyer agrees on a price, it's hard for me to see how that's screwing someone over.
You didn't know. It was a trade among equals. This was different. That said, there are some situations where it's considered OK to rip people off. Finance works like that. But I would've thought that museums had slightly higher standards of conduct than Goldman Sachs...
At least here, for a transaction to be valid, both parties must be in the same kind of conditions, regarding to the knowledge of the thing (if one does not know what the object is, they should explain the other, not just take advantage of the situation). This was clearly not the case.
"It may also be sued annulment or amendment of legal acts when one party exploiting the need, lightness or inexperience of the other, obtained through them an obviously disproportionate and unjustified financial advantage."
Spending just a few seconds in google, it seems that it is the same in other countries: "When anyone, exploiting the sum ignorance, notorious inexperience or extreme misery of another, obtains an excessive profit that is clearly disproportionate to what he in turn agrees, the injured party is entitled to seek rescission of the contract, and if it impossible equitable reduction obligation."
But of course, it all depends of the law of the place. If that that's OK in Essex, well... too bad for the one selling this object. And good for the museum taking advantage of that opportunity (even if it may sound a little bit unfair). At least this machine will be in good hands.
In any case, it'd be nice if they stop bragging about that.
-----
Edit: And according to wikipedia[1]:
In English Law, "unilateral mistake is where only one party to a contract is mistaken as to the terms or subject-matter. The courts will uphold such a contract unless it was determined that the non-mistaken party was aware of the mistake and tried to take advantage of the mistake"
IANAL, but in this case, I think there was obviously one party that didn't know what the object was, and another that did know and was taking advantage of the situation ("It was advertised as a telegram machine ", "keep the change" and all that).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_in_English_law
The wheel with the black and white bars is a centrifugal governor. The speed is adjustable, and you use a special tuning fork with a shutter to calibrate the speed. This is a standard Teletype motor feature for when you can't rely on AC power line frequency.
It's still not clear if this find included the crypto unit, or just the teleprinter. If they actually found a crypto unit, this is a big deal. Those were very rare.
[1] http://cryptomuseum.com/crypto/lorenz/sz40/img/301491/000/fu...
"It looks like an electric motor in black casing with two shafts on each side, which drive the gears of the Lorenz machine," explains volunteer John Wetter.
Volunteers hope the public will look out for it and if all else fails are hoping someone might want to build them a new one until they find it.
If it's just a dual-shaft motor with nothing else special about it, fortunately those are widely available:
http://www.surpluscenter.com/New-Arrivals/1600-RPM-115-VAC-D...
Kind of a dick move.
Here's my overhaul of the Teletype Corp. version.[1] Here's a Lorenz version someone else has.[2] Here's Bletchley Park's set, with the crypto unit and the teleprinter.[3]
After I got my first Model 14, I had the paper tape they need made by a company in China. The minimum order was 500 rolls, so I sometimes sell paper tape to museums. (I tried US manufacturers first. Either they didn't want a small order, wanted a very high price, or the edge quality of the paper was so bad the tape would jam.)
[1] http://www.aetherltd.com/refurbishing14.html [2] http://www.teleprinter.net/english/inhalt/t2.shtml [3] http://cryptomuseum.com/crypto/lorenz/sz40/img/301491/000/fu...
Now that's a Baudot/ITA2 character set variation I haven't seen. There's already USTTY, ITA2, weather symbols, fractions (⅛, ¼, ⅜, etc., for stocks), versions with £ instead of #, and versions with a pilcrow. (¶). But I've never heard of a double lightning bolt symbol.
Unicode has a single lightning bolt (Stack Overflow cannot handle this) up in the astral planes with the new emoji. But no double lightning bolt. I suppose a request for that now has to go into the Unicode consortium.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/29/hitlers-top-secre...
TNMoC has some WW2 machines (most importantly Heath Robinson and Colossus) but they also have pretty much every other computer imaginable, with some of the proper historical stuff actually functional, and more BBC Micros than I've seen since school.
but you know it is real gold and say "okay here's $10"
is that honest and moral?