The Codex was sold to Bill Gates by Christie's auction house on 11 November 1994 in New York for . After Gates acquired the Codex, he had its pages scanned into digital image files, some of which were later distributed as screen saver and wallpaper files on a CD-ROM as part of a Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 desktop theme, which would later be included with Windows 98 and Windows ME. A comprehensive CD-ROM version (simply titled "Leonardo da Vinci") was released by Corbis in 1997.