Christie\u2019s has withdrawn\u00a0one of the world’s first calculating machines from a Paris sale, following the suspension of its\u00a0export certificate by a French court. <\/p>\n
Carrying an estimate of between \u20ac2m to \u20ac3m, the calculator is nicknamed \u201cPascaline\u201d after its inventor, the 17th-century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. From 1645, Pascal created 20 \u201carithmetic machines\u201d, including the one that had been scheduled for sale on November 19. It was to be sold along with other items owned by the late engineer and manuscript collector L\u00e9on Parc\u00e9. Books by Pascal, Descartes, Montaigne, Galileo or Newton were also consigned to the sale, which went ahead without the calculator.<\/p>\n
In the catalogue notes, Christie\u2019s described the calculator as \u201cthe most important scientific instrument ever offered at auction\u201d and stressed the \u201chistorical importance” of this “first attempt to substitute the human mind with a machine”. <\/p>\n
These are the same terms used in arguments presented to the court by four heritage organisations and associations of friends of Blaise Pascal, along with three professors\u2014Jean-Michel Bismut, Thierry Lambre and Laurence Plazenet\u2014who successfully blocked the export certificate for the \u201cnational treasure\u201d. <\/p>\n
The ministry of culture, which authorised the export certificate in May, responded\u00a0that five of the eight surviving original Pascalines, including the very first one presented in 1645 to King Louis XIV, are already in French public collections. Scholars replied that this one is unique because it the only remaining version specifically developed for land surveying, rather than accountancy or equations, the other two functions that Pascal designed the machines to perform.<\/p>\n
At an emergency hearing on 18 November, just one day before the scheduled sale, an administrative court considered there were sufficient grounds to challenge the export license, \u201ctaking into account its historical importance\u201d. “Serious doubts” were raised on the transparency of the procedure and the ministry\u2019s forensic expertise. <\/p>\n
The case will now proceed in court for a final decision, so Christie\u2019s has only \u201csuspended\u201d the sale. Nevertheless, it is the first time that an export license for a cultural item has been stopped by a court ruling, raising concern among some members of the trade for the future implications of this decision. <\/p>\n
When a work is labelled a \u201cnational treasure\u201d, the state can deny an export license for 30 months, allowing national collections to raise the funds to buy it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christie\u2019s has withdrawn\u00a0one of the world’s first calculating machines from a Paris sale, following the suspension of its\u00a0export…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[9929,15057,18846,2000,299,163892,36,184242],"class_list":{"0":"post-583623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-art-market","9":"tag-auctions","10":"tag-christies","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-export-policies","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-imports-and-exports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115584911496614896","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}