A major auction house had a big ticket item up for sale earlier this week. It was not a painting by the father of French Impressionism. It was however, a work of art in its own right: The prototype for the world’s first integrated circuit. The first microchip, mounted on a piece of glass.

Christie’s tried to sell it yesterday; Auctioneers called it, “virtually the birth certificate of the modern computing era.” They estimated it would sell for more than a million dollars.

In the end, no one wanted it — or no one was willing to pay enough for it.

It didn’t sell.