Rare 1960s NASA Audio Recordings Have Been Found and Digitized

November 21, 2016 5:00 am

You never know what you’ll find when you pull stuff out of old boxes.

Recently an audio technician at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, discovered some audio recordings that had been sitting in a box for decades. The audio technician pulled them out, dusted them off, and digitized them, and the result is a collection of rare 1960s-era recordings that sound new. (This comes on the heels of the recent remastering and release of NASA’s famed gold record.)

The recordings include conversations between Jet Propulsion Laboratory team members and notable figures of the ’60s, such as astronaut John Glenn (the first American to orbit the Earth) and presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The conversations have to do with experimental communications involving a satellite balloon known as Echo and other early satellites.

“It’s critical for us to save our past because it can help inform our future,” notes JPL historian Erik Conway.

Watch the video below to learn more.

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