Venice · 1950s

The Chronovisor

A machine built to look back through time and bring the sights and sounds of history onto a screen.

ROMA · 63 a.C.
SENATUS · M. TULLIUS CICERO
AnnusLocusSonus
What it is

A window onto the past

The Chronovisor is a device created by Father Pellegrino Ernetti, a Benedictine monk in Venice. He described it as a kind of television receiver for history. Instead of picking up a broadcast, it picked up events that had already happened.

The idea behind it is simple and striking. Every word spoken and every scene that takes place leaves behind a trace of energy. That energy never fully disappears. With the right equipment, Ernetti said, those traces could be gathered, sorted and turned back into pictures and sound.

ROMA63 a.C.ANNUS · LOCUS · SONUS
The Chronovisor as Ernetti described it.
Who built it

A monk and two great scientists

Ernetti led the project. He said he did not work alone, and that his team included some of the most famous scientific minds of the twentieth century.

P.E.
Inventor

Father Pellegrino Ernetti

Benedictine monk at San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, and a leading scholar of ancient music. His study of sound and early music led him to the question at the heart of the machine: can sound from the past be recovered?

Enrico Fermi
Physicist

Enrico Fermi

Nobel Prize–winning Italian physicist and one of the founders of the atomic age. Ernetti named him as one of the scientists who worked with him on the project.

Wernher von Braun
Engineer

Wernher von Braun

Rocket engineer who later helped carry Americans to the Moon. Ernetti listed him among the team's members as well.

How it works

Inside the machine

  • Antennas
    Three antennas, each made of a different metal, gathered light and sound from every direction.
    Metal IMetal IIMetal III
  • Selector
    Dials and levers let the operator choose a date and a place, much like tuning a radio to a station.
  • Screen
    A cathode-ray screen showed the scene as moving pictures, with the sound played alongside.
  • Recorder
    A recording device captured what appeared, so it could be studied later.
San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
San Giorgio Maggiore, where Ernetti lived and worked.
What it showed

Scenes from history

Ernetti said the team tuned the Chronovisor to some of the most important moments in the ancient world.

Cicero Denounces Catiline, by Cesare Maccari
Cicero speaking before the Roman Senate, one of the first scenes the team viewed.
63 BCRome
Cicero addressing the Roman Senate. Ernetti said this was among the first scenes the team watched, and that they heard the speech in Latin.
169 BCRome
A performance of Thyestes, a play by the Roman poet Quintus Ennius. Ernetti said the machine let him write down the full text of the play.
c. AD 33Jerusalem
The crucifixion of Jesus, which Ernetti called the most moving thing he ever saw on the screen.
How the world found out

From a magazine page to a book

The story became public in 1972, when the Italian weekly La Domenica del Corriere ran an article about the machine and its inventor.

Years later the French priest and writer François Brune spoke with Ernetti at length and told the full story in his book Le nouveau mystère du Vatican (The Vatican's New Mystery). According to Ernetti, the Chronovisor was eventually handed over to the Vatican for safekeeping.

A machine that could open the past, kept out of sight in the heart of Rome.
Father Pellegrino Ernetti, 1925–1994. Monk, musicologist and inventor of the Chronovisor.

Images: Wikimedia Commons (public domain and CC BY-SA).