The adventure begins!

By Philippe Dubois, Chairman.

Hello and welcome to the first article devoted to the adventure of the Micral N and its restoration by the MO5 association!

For this first article, here's the story and photos of the purchase of the Micral N from the seller by the MO5 association. It was on 20 January 2021 that we received an extraordinary e-mail, which we had to read several times to be sure we weren't dreaming:

"Good morning,

I'm contacting you because I have a Micral computer.
I want to sell it and I thought of your association for reasons of heritage and your commitment.
I seem to remember that at the 2017 auction for the same machine surely more complete you could not follow this American !!!

Before considering an auction, I would like to talk to you.
If you're interested, I'll leave you my contact details so that we can discuss it face-to-face.

Have a nice day,
Christophe xx" (Editor's note: we will only refer to the seller by his first name, in accordance with his wishes)

I immediately replied to the other people in charge of the association, who had also just received the e-mail, that I was going to contact the seller immediately. In fact, the very same day, and a little nervous, I called the person in question, and the purchase was already in progress.

As a reminder, the MO5 association and the Micral N have a long history of love. We first met in 1999 in Paris when its inventor, François Gernelle, invited me to a press conference to demonstrate his personal copy of the Micral N, which he donated to the Musée des Arts et Métiers in 2006.

Then, in 2006, the MO5 association, led by Jean-François Del Nero, our chief electronics engineer, wanted to study the example belonging to the Cité des Sciences, currently in the collections of the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, in order to understand how it worked, but unfortunately it was not possible to gain access to it.

The copy of Micral N donated by Pierre Mounier-Kuhn to the Cité des Sciences de la Villette. Photo David Monniaux, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In 2017, the benevolent French collecting community alerted the MO5 association to the fact that an auction of a Micral N accompanied by numerous accessories and documentation was going to take place at the Château d'Artigny. The association decided to take part in the auction and contacted a number of influential figures in the French digital world in order to obtain financial support. Unfortunately for France's heritage, the Micral was sold for nearly €50,000 to Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, and shipped to Seattle. Paul Allen then donated the Micral N to the Living Computer Museum in Seattle.

A year later, sadly, Mr Allen passed away. His daughter took over her father's business and decided to cut off the museum's funding. At present, the copy of Micral N sent to Seattle is nowhere to be found, in an unknown condition. It might as well be lost.

The Micral N sold at auction in 2017 and bought by Paul Allen, co-creator of Microsoft.

It was therefore a wonderful opportunity for the association to receive this offer to acquire and restore a copy of Micral N ourselves. The seller's father, whose company was based a stone's throw from R2E, had learned of the existence of this microcomputer at the time, and why it was revolutionary. So he bought a copy of the Micral N directly from R2E, and that's the one we now have.

After our initial discussions, here are the first photos we received from the seller. These are particularly important, because it's essential to know immediately before committing ourselves whether we're dealing with a genuine Micral N, and not a copy or a doctored machine. The answer is fairly obvious from the photos sent by Christophe :

The copy of Micral N offered to the MO5 association

View from behind the machine, revealing the internal boards and power plugs

The association therefore accepted the offer from the seller, who did not wish to divulge his name as we had indicated in the campaign. Once the financial proposal had been validated, we proposed an appointment as soon as possible to come and see and collect the precious machine.

Philippe Dubois, Chairman, and David Soumet, Vice-Chairman, on the road to acquisition

So we got on the train with David Soumet, vice-president of the MO5 association, and Jorge, who accompanied us to take photos and videos of the meeting. Christophe arranged to meet us at a hotel not far from his home so that we could see the machine, touch it and make sure that everything was in order before we set off again.

Philippe Dubois, David Soumet and Micral N salesman Christophe.

After this very pleasant meeting for the small team, Christophe having known the association for some time and appreciated our work, we headed back to Paris with a suitcase loaded with the precious loot to put the machine in a collection, ready to be studied.

The Micral N has finally arrived in its new home at the MO5 association premises.

Now we'll be able to take a close look at this magnificent example of Micral N, to judge its general condition and meticulously study what's inside. But that's a story for another article next week!

In the meantime, please don't forget to take part in the campaign to support our work! https://micral.mo5.com