Appraisals

Jeremy appraises books, manuscripts, photographs, film, video, historic computers, and related materials on the history of medicine, science, technology, natural history, and economics for purposes of insurance, estates, or donation to non-profit institutions.

Over the years Jeremy has done hundreds of appraisals, large and small, concerning material from the Middle Ages to the present. Jeremy has a special interest in appraising archives and donations relating to nineteenth and twentieth century science, medicine, and technology, and corporate archives in related fields. Among the personal archives he has appraised are those of:

Linus PaulingLinus Pauling
  • In May 2015 Jeremy appraised a significant portion of the archive of Baruch Samuel Blumberg for donation to the American Philosophical Society. This donation included an extraordinary collection of about 100 large volumes of diaries and daybooks that Blumberg maintained meticulously throughout his life, plus much other remarkable documentation. Blumberg shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the hepatitis B virus, for screens for the hepatatis B virus, and for the invention of the hepatitis B vaccine. Because hepatitis B is the major global risk factor for hepatocellular (primary liver) cancer, this virus and tobacco are the most important environmental carcinogens to which humans are exposed. After Blumberg's death in 2011 his colleague Jonathan Chernoff stated: "I think its fair to say that Barry [Baruch Blumberg] prevented more cancer deaths than any person who's ever lived."
  • In March 2017 Jeremy appraised the Donald A. Glaser archive for donation to the California Institute of Technology. This brought the number of archives of Nobel laureates in science that Jeremy appraised to four, the others being Linus Pauling, Paul Ehrlich and Baruch Blumberg. In 1960, at the age of only 34, Donald Glaser received the Nobel Prize for Physics for the invention and application of the bubble chamber.The Donald Glaser archive is also of major significance for the history of bio-engineering and biotechnology, as after receiving the Nobel Prize Glaser invented machines that pioneered the computerized automation of research in molecular biology, and in 1971 Glaser co-founded the world’s first biotechnology company, Cetus Corporation. After those achievements, in the 1980s Donald Glaser devoted much of the last 25 years of his life to experimentation in the psychophysics of vision and perception, or the neurobiology of vision. In each of these three fields of research, Glaser directed his attention to very significant problems involving large amounts of data, and brought a physicist’s precision to their solution.

Jeremy has also appraised corporate archives.

As editor/author of the leading bibliographical website for the history of the bio-medical sciences, HistoryofMedicineandBiology.com (Garrison-Morton), Jeremy has special expertise concerning the historical literature of medicine and biology from the ancient world to the 21st century. In June and July 2006 Jeremy appraised the pre-1850 portion of the rare book and manuscript collection of Stanford University’s Lane Medical Library. The project, conducted on the hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Lane Library, involved reviewing and ranking approximately 4500 individual items, making a selection of the top 100 items in the collection, writing detailed annotations for the top 100 items, and writing an illustrated introduction discussing the history of the formation of Lane’s historical collections in the context of the history of Stanford Medical School.

In January 2008 Jeremy collaborated with fellow ABAA member and tax lawyer, Bruce Barnett, on the appraisal of frozen ampoules of the human diploid cell strain WI-38 donated to the Coriell Institute for Medical Research by the developer of the cell strain, Leonard Hayflick. WI-38 is among the most widely-used, and the most highly characterized normal human cell population. This may be one of the first appraisals of living material for donation to a non-profit organization.

Apple 1Apple 1

In March 2008 Jeremy appraised an original Apple 1 computer for donation to the American Foundation for the National Museums of Scotland. The founding product of Apple Computer, the Apple I is one of the rarest and most desirable collector’s items in the history of personal computing. The entire production consisted of only 200 examples. The donation included an original Apple 1 computer with its optional cassette tape interface, matching vintage keyboard, 12 inch black and white video monitor, the original computer manual, cassette tape interface manual, warranty, schematic diagrams, hardware and programming manuals for the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Apple BASIC documentation, and computer programming documentation created by the original owner.

In October 2011 Jeremy appraised a collection of original computing devices, including probably the only surviving example of Edward Berkeley's Simon, which has been called the first personal computer, and the unique Squee, the Electronic Robot Squirrel, which has been called "The first of the true robots." These were donated to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, by its co-founder, C. Gordon Bell.

During June through August 2014 Jeremy appraised the library of natural history films, videos and still photographs produced by film director, producer and cinematographer Al Giddings for donation to Rutgers University. Created over four decades, this library of approximately 2000 hours of motion pictures and about 30,000 still images was the largest and most scientifically significant privately owned library of professional underwater and ocean-related natural history motion pictures and still images in the world.

Among Jeremy’s newer appraisal interests are establishing the fair market value for intellectual property in digital form, such as digital images or digital films. In October and November 2014 Jeremy appraised the David Bohrman Archive of Innovation in Journalism for donation to Stanford University. Besides the equivalent of fifty file drawers of paper records, and a collection of television journalism artifacts, this archive included twenty terabytes, or approximately 3000 hours, of television news produced by David Bohrman during his career from 1978 to 2013, all converted to the latest digital format and carefully archived in a organized and searchable manner. This was probably one of the largest archives of digital video and related documents appraised up to this time. Besides its great value for the study of telelvision news production and journalism, the Bohrman archive may be researched by scholars interested in many fields, such as the following: history, politics and political science, social science, social media, space, criminal justice, geography, language, popular culture, fashion, design, information graphics, data visualization, and war.

In February 2015 Jeremy appraised the archive of the Russian American mathematical logician Grigori Mints for donation to Stanford University. A major contributor to proof theory--the analysis of the structure of mathematical reasoning, much of Mints' work applied to theoretical issues in computer science, software, and artificial intelligence.

Also in February 2015, Jeremy completed the insurance appraisal of the first Apple I computer ever delivered to a user; in this case the machine was a gift from Steve Wozniak to a teacher, Liza Loop, who took the computer into schools, before other Apple I's were sold.

In March 2015 Jeremy appraised three complete massive historic IBM mainframes, including an IBM 650, IBM 709, and IBM 7094, a complete Bendix G-15 “personal” computer, some input/output components manufactured for the IBM 705 system, which could be used with either the 709 or 7094 systems, about 300 spare parts, technical literature and software for the IBM computer systems donated, and the massive copper connecting cables for the systems. This donation made by Paul Pierce to the Computer History Museum, may best be characterized as epic in size and significance. The total weight of the donation was 104,570 pounds (more than 52 tons).  It consisted of 353 separate hardware items. The three IBM mainframes were the only surviving examples of those systems complete with all components and the python-like connecting cables.

In May 2015, for Corning Optical Communications, Jeremy appraised Donald Keck's laboratory notebook (June 26, 1970- June 27, 1971) in which he first recorded (probably on August 14) the achievement of the Corning research team in obtaining the crucial attenuation level of 20dB in glass required for optical fiber communications. The group demonstrated a 17dB optic attenuation per kilometer by doping silica glass with titanium. This was the initial key discovery that enabled the fiber optic communications industry and the Internet. Along with this notebook Jeremy also appraised a sample of Corning's first optical fiber cable (1975) and related materials.

In September 2015, for the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Jeremy appraised three original components of the IAS machine produced by the Electronic Computer Project led by John von Neumann, and constructed under the supervision of the engineer Julian Bigelow. The IAS machine was the first computer built in the United States that was designed from the ground up as a stored-program machine; it was also the first computer to incorporate from the inception of its design what became known as the von Neumann architecture. The components appraised included a power supply and two shift registers. These may be the only surviving components of this historic computer apart from the computer itself, which is preserved at the National Museum of American History.

In October 2015 Jeremy appraised the original first Pong prototype for donation to the Computer History Museum by its inventor Allan Alcorn. Pong was the first commercially successful video game, and this prototype, which Alcorn designed and produced for Atari, represents the beginning of the video game industry. The prototype is also the subject of one of the most legendary Silicon Valley startup stories. On June 27, 1972 Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded Atari in Sunnyvale, California, and hired Alcorn to design the table tennis (ping-pong) game Pong. Alcorn designed and produced the first prototype, and, as an experiment, in September 1972 Alcorn and Nolan Bushnell placed this prototype in Andy Capp’s bar in Sunnyvale. To play the game users had to put a quarter in the coin slot. Measured by the number of quarters paid to play the first prototype (roughly $40 per night; enough sometimes to overfill the coin box and jam the machine), the game was judged an immediate success. Based on this almost comically limited market research, Atari announced the commercial release of Pong on November 29, 1972.

In October 2016 Jeremy appraised one of three original Dvorak Simplified Keyboard Typewriters invented by the educational psychologist August Dvorak, and his brother-in-law William Dealey in 1932. The two patented the keyboard in 1936, and along with Nellie Merrick and Gertrude Ford, wrote a book promoting the advantages of their system over the QWERTY keyboard entitled Typewriting Behavior, published in 1936. This typewriter, originally owned and used by August Dvorak's daughter, was donated to the Computer History Museum. The advantages of the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard are very well known, and are often favored by programmers. Perhaps for this reason most major computer operating systems, including Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, Chrome OS, and BSD, allow a user to switch to the Dvorak keyboard in software. This capability has resulted in a far greater number of Dvorak keyboard users today than in the days of mechanical or electric typewriters. It has also given this typewriter a place in the history of computing, and has created a new level of historical interest in it beyond its role in the history of typewriters.

In October and November 2016 Jeremy appraised the archive of John W. Gofman for donation to the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. This archive stood out for Gofman's great scientific discoveries, and for his extraordinarily articulate scientific papers, books, speeches, legal testimonies, and interviews on topics concerning large scale health problems in atherosclerosis and heart disease and the carcinogenic effects of ionizing radiation. The archive is a major source of primary research material for subjects in which there is extensive political and scholarly interest, including the controversies fought out during his career concerning the safety of nuclear power plants, and the health dangers of exposure to ionizing radiation from nuclear fallout and from nuclear power plants, and from plutonium exposure from breeder-reactors. Dr. Gofman also campaigned against excessive exposure to ionizing radiation from unwise radiation therapy treatments, from excessive exposure associated with various diagnostic radiologic procedures, and from fluoroscopy employed during therapeutic procedures. These issues remain of major research interest both the socio-political and scientific points of view. Besides these scientific contributions to important socio-political issues, Gofman’s discoveries of lipids as risk factors in atherosclerosis were probably deserving of the Nobel Prize for medicine, though he never received that award.

A nuclear/physical chemist as well as a physician, Gofman co-discovered several radioisotopes, including Pa-232, U-232, Pa-233, and U-233 and proof of the slow and fast neutron fissionability of U-233 while working on his PhD dissertation under Glenn T. Seaborg.  Gofman was the third person ever to work with plutonium, and, having devised an early process for separating plutonium from fission products at J. Robert Oppenheimer’s request, Gofman was the first chemist ever to isolate milligram quantities of plutonium, a key component in the atomic bomb. Other topics to which Gofman made very significant contributions included lipoproteins, atherosclerosis, and coronary heart disease; the ultracentrifugal discovery and analysis of serum lipoproteins, including the identification of LDL, VLDL, and HDL and the discovery of LDL as a measurable risk factor in atherosclerosis. For this great work, in 1974 the American College of Cardiology named Gofman as one of the twenty-five leading researchers in the field during the previous quarter-century. An edited version of the Gofman appraisal is available at this link.

In January 2017 Jeremy appraised the complete, fully functional Film and Television Archive and Restoration Laboratory System that was donated to the Film Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This system, which is complex, elaborate, and weighs several tons, includes software and drivers developed specially developed for the equipment, and enough spare parts for the system to be maintained in operation for the distant future. Because this equipment was developed and used for commercial film production during a transition period, roughly from 1990 to 2005, during which digital processes were invented for film special effects, and output on movie film, before the film industry switched over almost entirely to digital cinematography, digital editing, output and projection, very, very few examples of this equipment were ever produced, at great expense, for very few professional special effects film companies. As a result, hardly any functional systems exist today. This shortage of equipment and software has made it very difficult, and thus very expensive, for any university media archive, or film restoration department or teaching program to acquire this equipment, to restore historic films in both 16mm and 35mm to the highest possible standards, and record them back to film. The system was used to produce the famous movie Babe, released in 1995. In that film the animals are shown realistically moving their mouths when speaking. Since the film was shot using analog methods and real animals, and not animated, after cinematography and editing, the film was then scanned using the custom-made 35mm Pin-Registered Laser Scanning System, nicknamed “Thumper,” and each individual frame showing animals speaking was processed digitally to show the mouths of the animals moving while they spoke. Then the film was laser recorded back to motion picture film. This process is called digital intermediate (DI), and Babe is considered the first digital intermediate feature film. One might reasonably assume that recording back to film is an obsolete process replaced by digital, but viewing motion pictures on film retains its advocates, just as letterpress printing, handmade paper, and analog sound recordings have specialized but passionate followings. Besides the artistic and connoiseurship aspect of viewing movies on film, there is also the preservation aspect: films recorded on archival film stock have a projected life span of at least 100 years while it is anticipated that digital files will require curation and periodic conversion to new file standards and new recording media as digital technology advances.

In 2017 Jeremy appraised the entire rare book collections at the Galter Health Sciences Library at Northwestern University.  The collections, totalling approximately 7000 rare items, are exceptionally strong in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics, Pharmacy, Chemistry / Alchemy, Epidemiology, especially Plague, Infectious Disease, especially Fevers, Anatomy, Botany and Materia Medica, Surgery, Ophthalmology, Medical Ethics, Pathology, and Dentistry.

In January 2018 Jeremy appraised the unique patent certificate and the patent development and licensing file archive of the Cohen-Boyer recombinant DNA patent for their donation to the U.S. National Library of Medicine by Stanley N. Cohen. Central to the donation was the original patent certification for U.S. patent No. 4,234,224, "Process for Producing Biologically Functional Molecular Chimeras" issued on December 2, 1980.  The Cohen-Boyer recombinant DNA patent, and the
program that Stanford University developed for its licensing, are universally acknowledged, and widely reported, as essential key factors in the birth and development of the biotechnology industry. By the end of the licensing program Stanford and the University of California received license fees totalling $255,000,000. Perhaps more significantly, the patent was licensed to over 400 companies, and by 2001, 2442 known products were developed using the patented recombinant DNA technology. These products included drugs that generated $35 billion in sales during the life of the patent. Stanford's licensing method became the model for other research institutions to license patents in the biological sciences.

In 2019 Jeremy appraised the Papers of William Garth, Jr., Louis Rosenblum, Photon Inc., and the Graphics Research Foundation (GARF) that involved early attempts to photocompose non-Latin scripts (Chinese, Arabic languages of South Asia, Hebrew), the Sinotype I, II & III systems, etc. This archive included material pertaining to the origins of electronic computing in China. Because Chinese is a non-alphabetic language with thousands of pictographic characters, developing early mechanical typewriting systems, and later developing digital systems for typesetting and information processing, presented challenges not faced for alphabetic languages, leading to histories of development very different from the West.

In January and February 2021 Jeremy appraised the archive of Dudley Allen Buck (1927–1959) for donation to the Computer History Museum. An electrical engineer and inventor of cutting-edge components for high-speed computing devices in the 1950s, Buck made an extraordinary number of major contributions to the miniaturization of electronic components, memory technology and electron beam lithography before his sudden death at the age of only 32. In 1959 Buck suddenly died of a never fully explained respiratory disease. His brilliant scientific career ended after only nine short years. Had he continued on his meteoric trajectory through a normal lifespan he undoubtedly would have significantly influenced the development of technology in his areas of research.

Buck is best known for inventing the cryotron, a superconductive computer component that is operated in liquid helium at a temperature near absolute zero. When Buck invented cryotrons they were immediately recognized as a microminiaturized switching device—an alternative to the silicon microprocessor, with the drawback that they could only operate in liquid helium. Because of their extremely low temperature requirement, advances in cryotron research stagnated after Buck’s early death. However, very recently Buck’s miniature superconducting switches have found an application in cutting edge superconducting quantum computers and supercooled electronics for telescopes, making his work relevant to the development of quantum computing today.

Dudley Buck also invented ferroelectric memory (Ferroelectric RAM), content addressable memory (also known as associative memory or associative storage), non-destructive sensing of magnetic fields, and writing printed circuits with a beam of electrons (electron-beam lithography). In the process of reading data from a typical magnetic core memory contents of the memory are erased, making it necessary to take additional time to re-write the data back into the magnetic storage. "Quadrature sensing” of magnetic fields allows the state of magnetism of the core to be read without alteration, thus eliminating the extra time required to re-write memory data.

Among many other things, the Buck archive also contained important primary documents and blueprints concerning the Whirlwind I computer, and original autograph notebooks by Jay Forrester.

In March 2021 Jeremy completed the appraisal of the archives of the Voyager Company and the Criterion Collection, along with the archives of The Night Kitchen, the Center for the Future of the Book and other material on the history of electronic books, social reading, and the networked book for donation to Stanford University by Bob Stein and Ashton Applewhite. This archive, which included both printed and multimedia electronic publications, paper records and correspondence, email, and original digital multimedia publishing software, is probably the most significant archive in existence on the early history and development of the eBook or digital book.

Because eBooks were not intentionally collected by most institutional libraries during their early development, few libraries hold significant documentation of the early development of eBooks. Now that eBooks have become mainstream, the cultural significance of their early history has come into sharp focus.

Also in March 2021 Jeremy appraised the Thomas S. Mullaney East Asian Information Technology Collection donated to Stanford University by Prof. Thomas Mullaney. This was a collection of 23 objects or machines, including Chinese and Japanese typewriters and word processors, and 2392 archival or printed documents, mostly in Chinese, on a wide range of subjects, but especially focusing on underground publications reproduced from typewriter type, and the history of computing in China. Because Jeremy does not read Chinese, Prof. Mullaney provided an extensive annotated catalogue of the collection. His book, "The Chinese Typewriter: A History," was also very helpful in understanding the collection.

The Thomas S. Mullaney East Asian Information Technology History Collection is unique in the very special sense that not only are many of the individual items in it probably unique or near unique survivals, but the collection considered as a whole is unique, since there is no other collection of similar printed or archival material
preserved either in private hands, or in any institution in the world. This has been confirmed by Dr. Mullaney, who was forced to build the collection in order to pursue his research projects because no equivalent institutional or private collections exist.

Considering the “underground," gray market, or ephemeral nature of many of the Chinese publications in the Mullaney collection, reproduced from Chinese typewriter type, it is reasonable to assume that few, if any, other copies of many of the mimeographed or dittoed publications in the collection-- originally issued in very, very small editions-- were preserved. According to Professor Mullaney, the vast majority of the Mullaney collection consists of materials that are uncatalogued in Chinese library systems. These include: 1) manuals and guides (along the lines of the manuals that come with typewriters/word processors/etc., none of which are treated as official "publications" by most library systems); 2) the samizdat/underground/gray market "typed-and-mimeographed" publications, none of which had official permission to publish, and thus had no equivalent of ISBNs (hence are also uncatalogued); and 3) hand-made stencil books (same issue as above: all not permitted/unofficial, and thus none of them had equivalent of ISBNs, and thus went uncatalogued. Because most of these publications were never formally
documented and do not exist in library catalogue databases, they are not only very rare and possibly unique, but they are, for all intents and purposes, unknown to libraries and scholars.

During 2022 Jeremy appraised the archive of approximately 9,000 digital documents, approximately one thousand digital photographs, approximately ten terabytes of videos, audio recordings, and a collection of fifty-two physical objects, comprising The Archive of California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, Proposition 71 (2003-2019), The Archive of Americans for Cures (2004-2020) and The Archive of California Stem Cell Research, Treatments, and Cures Initiative, Proposition 14 (2019-2020). The initial portion of the archive donated to Stanford University in December 2021 documented in exhaustive detail, and in a well-organized manner, the background, drafting, campaigns for, passage of, and results of State of California Proposition 71 (2003-2019), the foundation and operation of Americans for Cures from 2004-2020, and the background, drafting, campaign for, and passage of California State Proposition 14 (2019-2020).

During 2023 Jeremy appraised the second portion of the archive, including approximately 8,575 digital documents. This archive, designated as Archive 2.0, and consisting of approximately 50,000 pages of information, included 262-page outline dated December 18, 2022 entitled MArchive 2.0 Documents: Lessons from Proposition 71 and Critical Influences on Building Proposition 14 – From CIRM to Americans for Cures, Including Lessons from the Deficiencies of Numerous States – and the Drafting, Ballot Litigation, and Campaign for Passage of Proposition 14.

The medical and political achievements recorded in this digital archive donated to Stanford have had immense and demonstrably historic influence on the development of health policy, medical research, and on the advancement of cures for some of the most serious diseases affecting humanity. It has been estimated that 100 million Americans suffer from diseases that could be cured through stem cell research. Passage of Propositions 71 and 14, and the creation of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) specified in Proposition 71, and grants made by CIRM, have had more positive and creative social and economic impact on medical research in the early 21st century than any other medical research funding and support organization in the world except the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

If you have books, manuscripts, photographs, data, or related materials, including computer or computer-related material, that need appraisal, please contact us.


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