The inaugural sale in the new, purpose-built gallery in the Aeolian Hall, Bloomfield Place, it “…ranges from medieval and Renaissance works on arithmetic, finger-reckoning and the abacus, to the birth in the 20th century of theoretical and practical computer science under Alan Turing”, according to Sotheby’s.
Illustrated above is a page from Pietro Borgo’s Aritmetica mercantile, printed in Venice in 1484 by Erhard Ratdolt, estimated at £40,000-50,000.