All that we do within our industry aims to provide and enhance the best possible audio visual offerings...

This highlights the significance of today - the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, which takes place every 27th October. This commemorative day was chosen by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Ogranization) back in 2005. We hadn’t previously come across this so thought it would make a good piece to share, although it may not be directly linked to our rack building roots, the research that we have done to share this article with you has opened up our eyes to the history behind what we work for and how much it means to the world.

The purpose of this day is to raise awareness of the significance of, and preservation risks of recorded sound and audio visual documents.

Focusing on this year’s theme which is “Discover, Remember & Share”, we have taken a look into the history of audio formats and discovered the Wikipedia timeline, which records the Phonautogram back in 1860 being mechanical analog recording format of the sound waveform transcribed to paper or glass, to the Vinyl LP record in 1948 & the cassette in 1969. The history of something which we almost we take for granted being at the touch of a button today really has come from a fantastic world of research, development and mostly importantly, passion.

For more on this interesting timeline, see this link

Looking back through time, we also realise that it has been a while since record players and televisions with rears as big of the back of a bus but as time progresses our knowledge and ability to not only present documentation but how we save it has developed in a way we could only have dreamt of.

This world day also recognises the preservation of risks for audio visual documentation and in the present day we are fortunate to have access to the cloud for everything we do we can save it on a portable device and back it up for an extra layer of loss prevention.

As time goes on, the worry for the preservation of such documentation is made easier as we have technology at the touch of a button in the comfort of our own homes/cinemas without even having to leave the house. Nevertheless, this day is a significant one for us all to take a step back and consider what we can do to aid the process. 

We hope you enjoyed this little snippet of history and that the "Discover, Remember & Share" theme sparks an interest for us to learn more about the heritage of our industry. Celebrations of this day are wide spread globally and can be tracked using the hashtag #audiovisualheritage