Time-capsule in the Vaults of the Paris Opera - Paris, France [Historic Site]
Posted by: 
tmob
N 48° 52.276 E 002° 19.937
31U E 451035 N 5413360
On Christmas Eve, 1907, a musical time-capsule was walled up in a storeroom of the Paris Opéra. The Time Capsule was opened 100 years later, in 2007.
Waymark Code: WMD2JB
Location: Île-de-France, France
Date Posted: 11/10/2011
Views: 64
«On Christmas Eve, 1907, a musical time-capsule was walled up in a storeroom of the Paris Opéra. The capsule actually comprised two cylindrical lead urns, each 36cm in diameter, into which were placed 24 disc- (as opposed to cylinder-) recordings of the great opera stars and instrumentalists of the early 20th Century. Each record was carefully wrapped in asbestos-covered cloth and separated by sheets of glass. The containers bore instructions that they were not to be opened for 100 years. In 1912, the Paris Opéra anticipated that recording technology was moving on and supplemented the two original urns with two more, containing not only 24 more records, but also a hand-cranked gramophone — including instructions on how to use it! — and a supply of needles with which to play the records.
In 1989, during building works to install air-conditioning at the Paris Opéra, it was discovered that the archive had been broken open. One of the 1912 urns was empty and the gramophone was missing. The remainder of the archive was immediately transferred to the Bibliothèque nationale de France. At the end of 2007, the 100 years had elapsed, so the archive was opened, as presumably Clark et al had intended. Fortunately, in both 1907 and 1912, a printed record of the archive's contents had been included in one of the 1907 urns and the unopened 1912 urn, so the information on what the contents of the empty urn had been was not lost.
Apart from those missing, the discs are relatively undamaged. A commercial release of a three-CD set of the recordings is being made in 2009 by EMI. None of the original discs has been used in the digital transcription; it was decided that they should remain unplayed until such time in the future when they can be played optically, thereby avoiding physical contact with the discs. Since precise details of which discs were in the archive was documented, copies of the same discs, available from other archives, were used as analogue masters to be digitized.»
-- Source
Photo from here
This Time Capsule have already been open, and it's exact location is not accessible to the public. However it's possible to visit the inside of this amazing building, and imagine the great voices that once sang there.