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Pigeon-Flown Internet Packet Sells for $24,600 at Christie's Auction

A printed internet packet flown by carrier pigeon in a 2001 experiment has sold at Christie's for $24,600, far above its $4,000 listing, according to TechRadar.

AI News Feed · 2026-10-16 08:45

The sale was part of Christie's "Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts Including Americana and Science" auction. The item is a small printed packet measuring 41mm by 210mm, framed and presented in 2002 to American network engineer David Waitzman, from whose collection it came. It was auctioned by Waitzman and the Bergen Linux User Group.

The experiment behind the packet was run by Norway's Bergen Linux User Group, known as BLUG, over a distance of three miles. The printed packet was tightly rolled and placed in a small message capsule attached to a pigeon's leg. The group used nine racing pigeons flying between lofts, carrying printed IP packets written in hexadecimal form, and dispatched them to their destination. Once the packets were scanned at the other end to confirm receipt, the process was repeated in the opposite direction, producing just four replies.

The concept originated 11 years earlier in a proposal by Waitzman titled "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers," published as RFC 1149 and still available online. The document opens by noting that "avian carriers can provide high delay, low throughput, and low altitude service," that the connection topology is limited to a single point-to-point path for each carrier used with standard carriers, and that many carriers can be used without significant interference with each other outside of early spring.

The document began as an April Fool's proposal, but the early Linux community took it up, leading to the 2001 proof of concept. TechRadar described the packet as one of the slowest pings in history.

According to the auction listing cited by TechRadar, "the RFC 1149 implementation has been described as a quintessential example of the Internet's tradition of the 'artful hack,' embodying the playfulness, technical ingenuity, and collaborative spirit that characterized the early Internet community." The buyer of the framed packet takes ownership of an early and unusual artifact of internet history.