Making of the Voyager Golden Record

A golden record album with The Sounds of Earth United States of America, Planet Earth and etched with "To the makers of music, all worlds, all time."

The Making of the Voyager Golden Record

27 Images
A round gold plate featuring diagrams that explain how to play a phonograph record and the location of Earth.
A golden record album with The Sounds of Earth United States of America, Planet Earth and etched with "To the makers of music, all worlds, all time."
Three men display the unfinished components of the Golden Record, the cover, the spacecraft mounting bracket and the record.
A man holds up two shiny metal record albums.
A woman dips a record in liquid.
A man guides a golden record through a manufacturing process.
The James G. Lee recording studio is a white one story building.
A person rinses off a record disc marked JPL.
A man examines a polished album-sized disc.
A man's face is reflected in a album-sized disc.
Go To Gallery

Many people were instrumental in the design, development and manufacturing of the golden record.

  • Blank records were provided by the Pyral S.A. of Creteil, France.
  • CBS Records contracted the JVC Cutting Center in Boulder, Colorado to cut the lacquer masters which were then sent to the James G. Lee Record Processing center in Gardena, California to cut and gold plate eight Voyager records.
  • Gold plating took place on August 23, 1977; afterward, the records were mounted in aluminum containers and delivered to JPL.
  • The record is constructed of gold-plated copper and is 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years.
  • The records also had the inscription "To the makers of music – all worlds, all times" hand-etched on its surface.