What is the Golden Record? Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded
Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time
and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers
that might find them in the distant future. With this example
before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager
1 and 2-a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story
of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is
carried by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk
containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity
of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were
selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of
Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates
assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as
those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other
animals. To this they added musical selections from different
cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in
fifty-five languages, and printed