How the Voyager Golden Record happened (and no, The Beatles actually weren't on the wishlist)

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/20/how-the-voyager-golden-record.html

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That’s fine, the Beatles already have 48 Gold Records (and 42 Platinum ones).

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What’s this got to do with Jerry Lewis? I axe you?

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How it should have ended. :wink:

or maybe:

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“I am the Walrus” to give a more accurate picture of the absurd state of the world.

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Oddly enough, there wasn’t a big push to include stills of Lewis’ The Night the Clown Cried on the disc.

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Or you can listen and look at the entire contents of the record at the JPL website. And since the record was made for NASA, doing so violates no copyrights whatsoever.

I had forgotten, NASA used a bunch of copyrighted content for the record, so only some of it is available at the JPL website. Eternal copyright sucks. However, searching your favourite torrent site for “voyager golden record” will get you a CD rip of the record’s audio.

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Both have left this world but will not soon be forgotten.

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Do Millennials (and post-Millennials/GenZ) know who Jerry Lewis was, though? At most they know Professor Frink who was based on his character from The Nutty Professor.

Are you saying Millennials are responsible for killing Jerry Lewis?

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Don’t be so hard on them, they didn’t have all the advantages we had.

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Obligatory: Punk Voyager.

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“Science journalist Timothy Ferris produced this enchanting phonograph record that tells a story of our planet expressed in sounds, images, and science for any extraterrestrial intelligence that may encounter it.”

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It’s worth listening to this interview with Ann Druan about the making of the record and how she and Sagan fell in love over this record (from about 17’40’’):

I was born 1984, and while i’m very well aware of who he is i don’t think i’ve ever seen a single movie of his. Though that might be more due to random chance than anything else. I watched whatever was on TV growing up so i’ve seen quite a random selection of fairly old movies, his were just never among them.

Anyone born after the 90’s i can imagine that the odds of them knowing who he is is probably much lower.

If the same record were made for the same purpose today, what would it be made of - still gold?

He fell majorly out of fashion, so his stuff doesn’t get played a great deal.

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