sound archive
The voices of the people themselves. A long panelled room with shelves of brown and black phonograph cylinders in labelled tubes, four thousand of them, copied from every field recording made since 1900 of a language that would not outlive its speakers. Hedda's workbench stands at the end under a lamp, with three Edison machines, a lathe and a jar of liquorice. The room is kept cool for the wax. Sometimes a cylinder is carried across to the Conservatory and played to a seed that will not germina...
Located in The Architecture of Babel.