Stephen Hawking

An original transcript from Stephen Hawking's Harvard University lecture series A Short History of the Universe, and a first edition of A Brief History of Time.

• Sold as a set of 3: 1 transcript, 1 letter, and one book.
• Stephen W. Hawking (English).
• A Brief History of Time: United Kingdom: Bantam, 1988.
• Transcript is bound in cardboard wrappers with three ties, and printed on 1980s ream printer paper.

The transcript is unrecorded and only Cambridge University have a similar copy according to their records. The transcript was sent to Russia (potentially to a fellow research fellow), but was stopped at customs. This is explained to a colleague in the included letter from Francis J M Turner of Hawking’s Cambridge College, Magdalene. The letter is dated 23rd April 1988. The transcript opens with the paragraph from Hawking,

‘I’m going to give this course of lectures with the help of a computer, and a speech synthesizer. You must forgive it the american accent: I have not been able to teach it proper English’.

The layout of the transcript differs from the chapters within the published first edition of A Brief History of Time which accompanies the transcript. The lectures cover similar topics as the first edition, specifically ‘Black Holes Ain’t So Black’, ‘The Expanding Universe’ and ‘The Origin and Fate of the Universe’. Interestingly, Chapter 10 and 11 of A Brief History of Time are covered in the lectures under the heading of ‘The Theory of Everything’. The latter title being what many considered as Hawking’s ‘watered-down’ version of A Brief History of Time. What is evident from the transcript is the range of ideas found in A Brief History of Time, as well as The Theory of Everything and The Universe in a Nutshell. Coupled with this, the transcript certainly is the first time these ideas appeared in print and its academic importance in the generation of Hawking’s ideas about black holes, matter and the expansion of the Universe. A truly unique item and something rarely available outside an academic collection, aside a true first edition, first printing of Hawking’s masterpiece.