Phonograph (A Machine for Pigs)

This article is about the phonographs in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. For those in Amnesia: Justine, see Phonograph (Justine).

Phonographs are audio recording and playback devices which can be found in various places around Oswald Mandus's estate and factory. They contain recorded conversations between himself and Professor A, who visited Mandus a little more than a week before Mandus's eventual death on New Year's Eve 1899.

The type of phonograph found around the estates are phonautographs, which are the earliest known devices used for recording sound. They were invented by French bookseller and printer Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville and patended in 1857. The devices used by Mandus are, however, of his own design, according to himself.

Phonograph in the Hall[]

Oswaldphonograph — One of the devices on a table in Mandus' estate.

Found at Oswald's Mansion, part 1, in a room full with paintings on the wall.

Mandus
"You don't mind if I record this, do you? I find it most useful."
Professor A
"Ah, you have one of those wonderful de Martinville's? No, of course not, my dear fellow."
Mandus
"It's my own design, Professor, along with everything you see."
Professor A
"Most useful. You understand, of course, why the Ministry sent me? That they have concerns?"

Phonograph in the Parlour[]

Found at Oswald's Mansion, part 2, sitting on the parlour table.

Professor A
"I must say my dear man, you look awful."
Mandus
"Yes, I seem to have picked up something rather nasty in Mexico."
Professor A
"I do understand. What you have been through... a lesser man would have crumbled. Yet you have made all of this. Your great factory, your charities, it is a wonder. For one man alone..."
Mandus
"It will all be made clear Professor. But first, a drink?"

Phonograph in the Cellar[]

Found in the Cellar, near the Decontamination Chamber entrance.

Professor A
"Extraordinary, quite extraordinary. And you built it all. Good God man, you have been busy."
Mandus
"It is wonderful how tragedy focuses the mind. What else was I to do? Fall into grief, pine and fade in my hopelessness? Why not then simply die in that jungle amongst those dead temples."

Phonograph in the Church[]

Found in the back room at the Church, near the staircase.

Mandus
"Your faith shackles your vision Professor, it is an iron coffin that keeps you from grasping the future. We require a new deity, one of steam and the wheel, of magnetism and progress. The old God is nothing more than a lamed hog, spitting back offal at mankind."

Phonograph in the Factory[]

Found at the Factory entrance, on a table with a lit lamp.

Mandus
"These men, Professor, these so-called men of vision! They would shackle the masses to a wheel and turn it until their backs break. All for that opiate, the lure of profit. These fools who lackey them, these priests, these officials, this... government. They make pigs of us all!"
Professor A
"But what solution, my dear man, how to break a cycle. You cannot simply remove the promise of a better world for these unfortunates. In the workhouses, in the orphanages, the belief in heaven is surely the only succor one can find!"
Mandus
"We do not need to wait! We can bring forth paradise now! We can speed the passion! With only a small sacrifice we can hold the apocalypse. With just a small sacrifice we can free our shackles and deliver them to paradise now."

Phonograph in the Sewers[]

Found at the Factory Sewers, in a dead-end passageway.

Mandus
"But we can save them, we can set them free, we can replace a rotten old world, with a clean new one!"
Professor A
"Mr. Mandus, you sound every bit the fanatic."
Mandus
"Well how can I be otherwise Professor? How can any man of ethics simply stand by and watch this world drown in its own excrement?"
Professor A
"And your Engineer, this visionary with whom you embarked upon this course. Does he share your views?"
Mandus
"Indeed he does, indeed he does! The poor fellow has seen it all before, now this is not the first great civilization he has wept for."
Professor A
"And so you set about things immediately upon your return."
Mandus
"Naturally, naturally, these things cannot be left to rot upon the tree, and sponsors were remarkably easy to find. I tell you Professor, a trail of greed brings rich men to your door, like pigs to truffles!"

Phonograph in the Bilge Pumps[]

Found in the Bilge, right at the entrance.

Professor A
"You seem to have undergone quite a profound conversion in Mexico, Mr Mandus."
Mandus
"You could not have seen it yourself and not, Professor. As we disembarked, even through my fever I saw the detritus of this so-called progress. I saw starvation and disease, rot and destruction polluting the waters of the Empire. We are ruiners, you and I and all of us, and we make the world unclean."
Professor A
"And you took it upon yourself to act as redeemer?"
Mandus
"Professor, I would not be so presumptuous. I am merely a conduit. I am constructing an architecture to wrestle our damnation to the ground and smother it with steam."

Phonograph in the Reactor[]

Found at the Reactor, on a table in the Rod Control Room.

Professor A
"And they feel no pain. The process is completely humane?"
Mandus
"Humane, Professor? That we judge the acceptable level of suffering by the human condition? Ask the beggar, Professor. Ask the orphan, ask the whore. Ask the starving, Professor, the weak, the sick, the filthy. Ask them to define your humane!"

Trivia[]

In the earlier versions of A Machine for Pigs, the phonograph on the pool table actually appeared on a table in the small room.