I must have missed this one somehow, but I just came across a Wired piece by veteran tech journalist and former Newsweek staffer Steven Levy, in which he describes — complete with some amazing photos (I only wish they were bigger) — the incredible three-storey library that entrepreneur and uber-geek Jay Walker (the guy behind Priceline) has constructed to hold all of his various books and other keepsakes. The list of things in this library will make your jaw drop open. It includes:
- a small earth globe signed by 9 astronauts
- rare books bound in rubies and other precious stones
- an early edition of Chaucer
- the chandelier from the Bond film Die Another Day
- the Bills of Mortality from London in 1665
- an instruction manual for the Saturn V rocket
- a 300-million-year old trilobite fossil
- the original hand prop from the TV show The Addams Family
- a hand-painted “celestial atlas” from 1660
- an original copy of The Nuremberg Chronicle, from 1493
- a working version of a Nazi-era Enigma machine
That’s apparently just a taste of what Walker’s 3,600-square-foot library contains, according to Levy, who says he is the first journalist to get a tour. I would give my right arm to have a few hours in there.