The draft of an encyclopedia article written by Albert Einstein explaining his Theory of Relativity is up for auction. Although, you’ll need to brush up on your German to read the original copy. The unsigned, six-page document entitled “The Essence of the Theory of Relativity” is an early version of an entry later translated into English and included in volume XVI of 1948 edition of The American Peoples Encyclopedia.
Einstein proposed and published his theories of special and general relativity in 1905 and 1915. The concepts are monumental achievements that form the basis of modern physics, and contain the relationship between mass and energy represented in history’s most famous equation: E=MC².
The bidding is being overseen by the auction house Remarkable Rarities, with live bidding scheduled to begin at 1PM EST in Boston. Described as a “museum-quality” piece of history, auctioneers currently estimate the papers to sell for at least $200,000.
Einstein had already dramatically altered humanity’s trajectory by the time he began work on his encyclopedia entry sometime in 1947-48. There would be no atomic age without his scientific contributions, even if this fact was something he occasionally loathed to admit.
“The ‘principle of relativity’ in the broadest sense is contained in the statement: The totality of physical phenomena is such that it offers no support for the establishment of the concept of ‘absolute motion’, or more briefly but less precisely: there is no absolute motion,” he summarized in his article. “It might seem that with such a negative statement little would be gained for our knowledge. But in reality, it is a strong restriction for the (in principle conceivable) laws of nature.”
Einstein went on to explain that these laws of nature are experienced through our physical perspectives in relation to the concepts of motion, time, and space. However, the pages slated for auction are far from his final draft. In fact, this version of Einstein’s encyclopedia contribution is unfinished.
“Only the coordinate differences together with the field quantities describing the gravitational field determine measurable distances between events. After one finds oneself in principle compelled to use not linear—” reads the document before ending abruptly.
With barely three years passed since the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, much of the general public still struggled to understand nuclear energy’s potential to offer both societal benefits and absolute destruction. Einstein’s introductory overview to the underlying principles likely helped contextualize the new era for curious readers, as well as educate and inspire the next generation of physicists.
