May 25, 2015 • 28 mins
People feel very strongly about time capsules, even though the contents are often a little underwhelming. What actually qualifies as a time capsule, and what are some of the most notable ones? Read the show notes here, including a correction about some State House confusion.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuffy missed in History class from dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcasting Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Holly fry So. Back in October, a time capsule was
removed from a lion statue that normally is on top
(00:23):
of the Old State House in Boston, Massachusetts. The statue
had been taken off of the roof for restoration, and
while they were at it, restorers decided to check on
rumors that there was a time capsule in its head.
This is something that had been completely unknown until a
couple of years before, and they wanted to see if
it was really there. It was. They used to fiber
(00:43):
optic camera to make sure that it was really there,
and then they very carefully removed it and during a
private opening, archivists lifted the lid and immediately realized that
what was in there was just packed way too tightly
to be taken out safely in the studio where the
statue was being restored, So they took the time capsule
to the Bostonian Society's Archives Center where they could really
(01:06):
take their time removing the contents in a more controlled environment. Holly,
do you remember this, Yes, they do. Right, because when
we put this story on our Facebook, people got so mad.
They really did. There were some very um, you know,
immediate response sort of anger notes. Yeah, so this time
(01:28):
capsule had been inside the statue for a hundred and
thirteen years, but people felt like that was not nearly
long enough for it to be opened. And then other
people interpreted this decision to take the box somewhere more
controlled to do the actual unpacking that they thought this
was a sign that incompetent amateurs had been trusted with
this delicate task, which was absolutely not true. It was
(01:49):
somebody with a master of library science and archives of
management like the people also argued that they should have
just had the whole statue removed somewhere safer, or that
there was a lot of questions about why the time
capsule needed to be removed in the first place. A
lot of people wanted it and its contents to go
back where it was. So then another time capsule was
(02:13):
removed from the old State House a couple of months later,
and this one dated back to and it had been
put behind the corner stone by Paul Revere, then Governor
of Massachusetts, Sam Adams and Colonel William Scully, and so
based on what had happened with that first Time capsule,
we were really careful about what details we included when
(02:34):
we put it up on our Facebook. We noted that
it had been taken out as part of a repair
to a water leak behind the cornerstone, and we specified
that professional professional conservators had removed it, and that it
was going to be x rayed and open under controlled conditions,
and that it was going to be put back after
its contents had been displayed for the public for a while. Holly,
(02:54):
do you also remember this, yes, because people were still
so mad. They were there's a fascinating reaction I think
that people have with time capsules and it it's I
couldn't break down the psychology of it because it varies
a lot, but there were definitely some angry responses. Yeah,
people were still really mad this time. They were mad
(03:14):
that the times capsule was going to be put back,
which was what people had wanted to happen with the
other time capsules. So at this point I kind of
never wanted to mention time capsules in the context of
the show again, which is one of the reasons why
neither Time capsule was in the unearthed episodes. But then
this April I got the chance to actually see the
(03:35):
contents of that Cornerstone time capsule while they were on
display at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and there
was literally a line all the way around the room
to see it. It stretched way out into adjoining galleries.
Was just like in this little display case that was
full of coins and newspapers. Uh. Part of this is
because the time capsule was really small, so there was
(03:57):
a little display case people were way eating to see into.
But part of it is because people care, apparently care
a whole lot about time capsules. Yeah, and I feel
compelled to mention that this sort of interesting um discussion
that sometimes got a little heated on our Facebook page,
that is not the only place that these were happening.
If you looked at news sites that were posting about it,
(04:18):
their comments sections were having very similar things play out. Yeah,
there was just angriness everywhere. So we're gonna talk about
time capsules today, maybe explore some of the reasons people
get so excited about them. Yes, and the tradition of
burying stuff really goes back almost to the beginning of
human history. The most obvious example is that most of
(04:39):
the world's cultures have at some point buried artifacts, letters, trinkets,
and other objects as parts of funeral rituals. People have
also been deliberately placing objects into building foundations and cornerstones
for thousands of years. For example, in Mesopotamia, a common
practice was to bury objects and building foundations for the
(05:00):
purpose of sanctifying the space and protecting it, or maybe
to commemorate something that was related to the building or
its builders or where it was being built. This practice
has continued throughout the ages and all over the world,
and it has also included embedding items of religious significance
in church cornerstones, and the idea that these deposits might
(05:22):
one day be discovered again has also cropped up at
various times throughout history. For example, around the seventh century
b c, Assyrian king as Her Heaven had relics and
clay tablets put in the foundations of monuments, saying that
he quote deposited them in the foundations and left them
for future times. But all of these burials of stuff
(05:43):
are a little different from the idea of a time capsule.
Although people of the past did sometimes think or write
about how future generations might some days stumble upon their
funerary deposits and their foundational deposits, which are what those
things are called. Uh, that was really secondary to their purpose.
They were being buried for some other reason, and the
idea that somebody might come dig them up later was
(06:05):
secondary to that. But in a time capsule, on the
other hand, people intentionally gather and store objects with the
specific plan that someone else is going to open them later,
and usually there's a specified time frame for what later means,
and for the time capsule purists, it's only a true
time capsule if there's a specific end date for the
(06:26):
thing to be opened again. This means that while a
letter from a six year old to his or her
future self to be opened ten years later is a
time capsule according to this definition, but a giant room
of artifacts to be opened at some undetermined time in
the future technically isn't. Neither are time capsules that include
those same sorts of things but are shot into space
(06:46):
to be one day opened by aliens. Maybe so basically,
the end date is really like the definer of what
isn't isn't a time capsule. Another aspect of time capsules
is that they're preserving usually a snapshot of everyday lie
when they were sealed, and while there are definitely time
capsules that have a much grander scope than that, they
almost always also include things like coins, newspapers, photographs, letters
(07:11):
from notable people, and everyday items that are kind of
meant to give future generations a glimpse of what life
used to be like. This, including of everyday life snapshots,
is also why accidental preservations of everyday life, like say
the ruins of Pompeii, are sometimes described as time capsules.
(07:32):
And although there are time capsules buried all over the world,
the practice is largely a tradition that came from and
flourished in the United States, and there are a couple
of reasons for this. A big one is that the
first most famous examples of time capsules, which we're going
to talk about in just a bit, we're all developed
in the United States. But sociologists and psychologists also theorized
(07:54):
that another reason that the United States has been so
intent on encapsulating history, to say it to the future,
is that as a nation, the history of the United
States is pretty short. There were definitely people in North
America long before the United States was a thing, but
European presence in North America only goes back a few
hundred years. So the theory goes that people kind of
(08:17):
subconsciously want to instantly create something that counts as history
in the eyes of future generations. And we're going to
talk about some specific examples of time capsules after we
have a brief forward from a sponsor. We're going to
talk about the first true time capsule to start off with,
and the first time we know of that people sealed
(08:39):
things away with the specific intent that they would be
brought out again at a particular date in the future
was for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and that
took place in eighteen seventy six. It had a century
safe that was meant to be opened in nineteen seventy six.
There might be earlier examples of time capsules out there that,
(09:00):
in addition to having been buried or sealed away, also
had a specified opening date, but this is the first
one we actually have documentation of. And the century safe
looked just like a safe, but with a purple velvet lining,
which is a detail I personally love. Uh. This safe
contained photographs, a book on temperance, and signatures of visitors
(09:20):
to the Centennial Exhibition, among other things. It was stored
under the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capital and opened
in nineteen seventy six. As intended, a new capsule, buried
in nineteen seventy six is to be opened in twenty
seventy six. Even though the Century Safe was the first
true time capsule, the words time capsule had not been
(09:42):
coined yet. That did not happen until nineteen thirty eight
leading up to the nineteen nine World's Fair. G Edward Pendre,
who was a public relations executive for Westinghouse Electric and
Manufacturing and gets the credit for coming up with the term. Also, uh,
for a while, because of the shape of what they
were building, you thought about calling it a time bomb. Uh.
(10:06):
I'm kind of glad that didn't take off. Um. Before
the word time capsule was coined, people normally called these
sorts of things safes or boxes, or similar generic terms.
Westinghouse was involved with all of this because it was
constructing the physical container for the World's Fair Time Capsule,
which was to stand a ground until sixty thirty nine,
(10:28):
otherwise known as five thousand years from its start date.
Because these capsules were supposed to stay buried for so long,
the containers had to be impervious to just about any
kind of damage that you could think of. The end
result was a seven and a half foot long or
two point two meter torpedo like tube made of a
non corrosive alloy with several interior layers meant to protect
(10:51):
the contents. These contents included cigarettes, men's and women's grimming tools, magazines,
and amples of seeds and fabrics. There's also a twenties
two thousand page microfilm essay, and there are letters from
such figures as Albert Einstein and then m I T
(11:12):
President Carl T. Compton. There was huge, huge fanfare around
the burying of this time capsule, and there's also a
total replica of it and its contents at the George
Westinghouse Museum. Running concurrently with the creation of the first
Westinghouse time capsule was the Crypt of Civilization, and I
know a lot about this one. This is an incredibly
(11:33):
huge and involved time capsule at Oglethorpe University, which is
here in Atlanta and where I used to work. Oglethorpe
President Thornwell Jacobs led this project, which is an attempt
to document all of human history. The idea is that
future archaeologists could just consult the material from this vault
instead of having to painstakingly recreate an idea of how
(11:54):
the world worked by piecing together information from lots of
different dig sites. The of Civilization today is on a
lower level of the administration building at Oglethorpe. And in
addition to all the physical items which are inside, which
are a lot things enormous, it contains more than six
hundred thousand pages of microfilm which document all sorts of
(12:15):
historical information. So this crypt was sealed on May ninety
and it's not supposed to be opened again until the
year eighty one thirteen, And this is six thousand, one
hundred seventy seven years from when it was filled up.
The idea is that as of nineteen forty there were
six thousand, one hundred seventy seven years of recorded history.
(12:39):
This crypt acts as like a midpoint between the beginnings
of recorded history and six thousand, one hundred seventy seven
years in the future when people can just open this
thing up to find out all about the past. Yeah,
And it's just a big door, a big metal door
that you walk by when you're in the Admin building.
(13:00):
It has engraving on it, but it's just the door
that's there that never opens. Because people were inspired by
the first Westinghouse time Capsule and Oglethorpe's Crypt of Civilization,
the time capsule Heyday released fan from nineteen five to
nine two. Because of the Centennial Exhibition, one years became
a popular time limit for time capsules to remain sealed.
(13:23):
There are also some connections between that first Westinghouse time
capsule and the Crypt that Oglethorpe so g Edward Pendre
had actually called for public support of the Crypt project
as it was being developed, and conversely, one of the
letters inside the first Westinghouse time capsule is a letter
(13:47):
from then Oglethorpe president Thornwell Jacobs um so that like
there was a lot of crossover between those two projects, uh,
which I think is pretty cool. We're also now I
can just talk about some other notable examples of time capsules,
and this is not at all an exhaustive list, not
even of the ones that are really big and impressive.
(14:10):
Westinghouse created a second time capsule for the nineteen sixty
eight New York World's Fair, and it's almost like an
update to the first one. It's the exact same size
and shape, and it's buried about ten feet away, but
its contents include things that didn't exist when the previous
time capsule had been put into the grounds. Includes birth
control pills, an artificial heart valve, credit cards, information about
(14:35):
atomic energy, and other more modern as of nineteen sixty
eight stuff. Both the first Westinghouse time capsule and the
second one are supposed to be opened in sixty nine
thirty nine together, so that second one is sort of
like a supplement to the first one rather than a
whole separate thing with a separate opening date. Two identical
(14:57):
time capsules were made for expos seventy in a Socca, Japan,
and one of these is to stay sealed for five
thousand years, and the other is intended to be opened
every one hundred years after an initial opening in the
year two thousand and One reason for this plan is
to check in and make sure everything's okay, but the
other is to update the time capsules contents so it
(15:18):
kind of becomes an ongoing living archive record. And these
time capsules are shaped like kettles and filled. They weigh
two point one to metric tons and although their purpose
was to detail in a very broad cross section life
in nineteen seventy, which means that they include lots and
lots of everyday items. There's also historical information including leaflets, films,
(15:41):
and other recordings, uh, including artifacts from the bombing of Hiroshima.
And you can actually see the total contents of all
these things online. Uh, they are available, and there is
so much stuff jammed into them. Yeah, I really I
had this moment where I was lummoxed because I stumbled
across this thing, UH that had, you know, a a
(16:05):
comprehensive list of everything that's in there, and there are
pictures of a lot of it. And I am used
to when you see older pictures of things that were
taken with earlier digital cameras, they look kind of terrible.
And I had this moment where I just forgot that
there were there were film cameras in nineteen seventy. You
can you can scan pictures from nineteen seventy or film
(16:27):
from seventy like that still exists, that didn't go away.
So I had this this moment. But I feel silly confessing,
but I still want to confess. For I was like, Wow,
where did they get all these pictures from all right cameras,
they were still a thing, Tracy, it had been a
long day. Um. There is a one year time capsule
(16:48):
that was created in Juneo, Alaska in n and this
one is huge because it was created using thousands of
items that were collected from Juneau residents. It's housed in
a convert lobby of a government building and you can
see some of the contents through two windows that go
to the outside. It's also lit with electric lights that
can be changed from the outside, so it's it can
(17:09):
be lit while still being totally sealed up. That's a
pretty cool feature. Uh. There's a fortieth anniversary time castle
that was buried in Disneyland in Anaheim, California, on July
seventeenth of nine, and that is to be opened on
that same date in the year. Here's hoping I'm there
for that. Yeah, it's like it's hotly gonna go. Uh.
(17:32):
It does look like a castle, which is why it
is called that. Um. Really, a hundred years is a
pretty standard time for a time capsule now, and then
we have these really fascinating millennial ones that go on
for a thousand years and beyond. But when the Internet
took off and things started changing at a super rapid pace.
(17:53):
M I T made a time capsule of the Online
World CORC at the Sloane School of Management, and that
one was to be opened after five years because the
Internet was evolving so rapidly. Aside from those that we've
just mentioned, all over the world there are boxes of documents, coins,
and household items just waiting to be dug up. And
(18:14):
we'll talk about what can go wrong on that front
after we have another quick word from a sponsor. So
the sad truth is, as much as people like the
idea of burying things for posterity, a lot of time
capsules just fail. In some cases they haven't even made
it to their burial or their ceiling. There was a
time capsule made for the US by Centennial that went
(18:36):
on a national tour with signatures from all over the
country that we're supposed to be collected and put inside,
and it made it through that whole tour, but then
was stolen from the truck at the burial site before
it could actually be buried. Capsules and their contents have
also been lost thanks to leaks, demolitions, and people just
forgetting that they were buried in the first place, or
(18:57):
that they existed at all. So, in addition to trying
to preserve all of human history up to nineteen forty
in the Cryptic Civilization, Oglethorpe is also trying to keep
track of all those time capsules so that nothing else
gets lost, and that's via the International Time Capsule Society,
which was established in nine. Yeah. One of the reasons
that they really wanted to get that time capsule out
(19:19):
of the lions Head Statue was because they did not
really know how it had been packaged and whether everything
and there had already been destroyed because of water, which
it hadn't, which was great. Uh. But there's also the
fact that a lot of times what's inside a typical
time capsule turns out to be really underwhelming once it's opened.
(19:40):
The very nature of time capsules means that a lot
of times they're full of newspapers and coins and photographs people, uh,
letters from people who were famous a hundred years ago
but nobody knows who they are now, and basically obsolete junk.
There's even a article in the Onion titled newly on
Earth time Capsule just full of useless old crap, which
(20:03):
made fun of both people's responses to what you usually
find when you open a time capsule and the types
of things that people select to put in there. Like
there's there's several layers of humor going on. Uh, this
is actually kind of funny to me. How often people
open a time capsule and like, no one is impressed
with what was inside because it's just newspapers and coins.
(20:26):
And yet when the time capsule was made, there were
knocked down, drag out fights about what to put inside
of there. Oh yeah, people are as angry about what
to put in time capsules as they were within all
of our Facebook posts about taking them out, because they
want to make sure the exact correct picture of that
time period is created with the contents. But even if
(20:50):
people didn't find their contents boring, more often than not,
the same objects placed inside time capsules are also preserved
better at museums and other archives. It's very rare that
someone opens a time capsule to discover something that's actually
a unique find. Usually you can see a better preserved
one of the exact same thing in one or many museums. However,
(21:15):
all of that said, time capsules usually inspire an interest
in history and some civic pride, at least in the
short term, and that counts when they're created and again
when they're opened, and especially for the ones they are
meant to stay sealed up for thousands of years, the
containers themselves can involve tremendous feats of engineering. This has
especially been true for all of these ones. They're supposed
(21:38):
to stay sealed up for many thousands of years. So
while people might classify their contents into the category of
worthless junk, their creation has a different type of worth.
And back to those time capsules that we talked about
at the very beginning of the show, the Lion statue
is back on top of the old State House, complete
(21:58):
with a new time capsule, and this time it's in
the lions scroll, so future generations will have easier access
to it. Among the contents of that capsule are an
iPhone five. Apple apparently would not provide an iPhone six
for this Foreign Relations of the United States nineteen seventy
seven to nineteen eighty volume three to replace a copy
(22:18):
of Foreign Relations of the United States eighteen ninety six.
It was in the prior box basically to fill space,
a number of letters and photos and a Boston Marathon Medal.
The original items were on display at the Old State
House for several weeks over December fourteen and into January.
The items inside were delicate enough that after that point
(22:39):
they were returned to the archives for preservation. Yeah, they
were actually preserved incredibly well, uh, considering how old the
time capsule was and how it had just been in
this statue out in the elements for so long. But
they did want to make sure that they lasted long
into the future, so they didn't stand public display for
all that long. The time capsule that was removed from
(23:00):
the cornerstone at the Old State House is also going
to go back in June, and it's going to include
its original contents having been cleaned and restored, along with
some new items along in the same vein basically what
was in there before. We're newspapers and coins to things
of that nature. Um. Its original contents were displayed at
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston during March and April.
(23:24):
The Bostonian Society and the Museum of Fine Arts also
both documented what was inside those boxes and put lots
of pictures and details on their websites. Yeah, so people
felt like they were being hidden away from public view.
They really really weren't. Tracy, Can you now have a
little bit of listener mail for us. I do have
(23:45):
a little bit of listener mail. Before I do that,
I have a correction, and it is a correction to
our Luisa ma Alcott episode in which, uh, in one
sentence we say that she got typhoid and in another
intance we say that she got typhus. And we know
those are two different diseases. And have you even talked
about those being two different diseases on the show yet
(24:08):
I messed it up in my note taking it. So
some days are better than others. You didn't and I didn't,
and our producer Nol didn't. No one caught it. It's
a thing that happened sometimes, so uh, I apologize for
that error. Our our listener mail is from Katie, and
(24:29):
Katie says, Dear Tracy and Holly, I love your podcast
and I was so excited to hear the episode about
the history of special education. As a moderate to severe
disabilities special education teacher as well as an instructor for
college level special education courses, it was very exciting to
have you share this information with your listeners. Like in
other civil rights movements, our country has come a long
(24:51):
way in improving the treatment of individuals with disabilities. One
part of the history of special education that you did
not talk about is standardized assessment. With a child left behind,
we must administer a state assessment to all children, regardless
of disability. This includes children that have the most severe disabilities.
Like other standardized assessments, these are created by the state
(25:12):
that administers them. While this sounds like a step in
the right direction, often these alternate assessments are not a
valid measure of student learning for low incident students. Many
of them involve using common Core standards and are presented
at a level that most of the students taking it
cannot access. At the end of your podcast, you made
a comment that even though special education teachers have good intentions,
(25:32):
often it's difficult to get i EPs written and implemented.
For many of us that teach students with moderate severe disabilities,
the assessment plays a large role in this struggle. The
assessments often have a portfolio component component of some sort
that require the teacher to create and implement work samples
and probes for the assessments. This is very time consuming
and often takes away from the time that we have
(25:52):
to work with the students on functional skills and interact
with them at their level. There are a few initiatives
in the US that are working on creating an assessment
that would be a more valid measure of student growth
for MSD students. These initiatives are still several years from
being completed, and it will be up to the states
to adopt them. Uh And then she goes on to
(26:13):
suggest a topic for the future. UM, So, thank you
Katie for writing in This was actually UH my mom's
experience with the children that she worked in with When
she was working in residential care for children with multiple disabilities.
She worked with a lot of children who, like their
i EP goals, would not be about things like learning
(26:33):
to read or write. They would be about things like
learning to swallow independently, or like learning to make eye
contact with other people. So it was a definitely a
different world than what people usually think of as education.
But those things all still counted as learning, but definitely
would not be included on some kind of state assessment
of their skills. So thank you, Katie. UH. If you
(26:57):
would like to write to us about this or any
other topic. We're at his three podcast at how stuff
works dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot
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at misson history dot spreadshirt dot com full of phone
(27:18):
cases and shirts and whatnot. If you would like to
learn more about what we talked about today, you can
come to our parent company's website, that is how stuff
works dot com. Write the word archaeology in the search
bar and you will learn about how we do most
of our learning about past when it comes to digging
things up, which is more through archaeological study than through
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(27:41):
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(28:04):
doesn't has to works on moon.
Welcome to Stuffy missed in History class from dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcasting Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Holly fry So. Back in October, a time capsule was
removed from a lion statue that normally is on top
(00:23):
of the Old State House in Boston, Massachusetts. The statue
had been taken off of the roof for restoration, and
while they were at it, restorers decided to check on
rumors that there was a time capsule in its head.
This is something that had been completely unknown until a
couple of years before, and they wanted to see if
it was really there. It was. They used to fiber
(00:43):
optic camera to make sure that it was really there,
and then they very carefully removed it and during a
private opening, archivists lifted the lid and immediately realized that
what was in there was just packed way too tightly
to be taken out safely in the studio where the
statue was being restored, So they took the time capsule
to the Bostonian Society's Archives Center where they could really
(01:06):
take their time removing the contents in a more controlled environment. Holly,
do you remember this, Yes, they do. Right, because when
we put this story on our Facebook, people got so mad.
They really did. There were some very um, you know,
immediate response sort of anger notes. Yeah, so this time
(01:28):
capsule had been inside the statue for a hundred and
thirteen years, but people felt like that was not nearly
long enough for it to be opened. And then other
people interpreted this decision to take the box somewhere more
controlled to do the actual unpacking that they thought this
was a sign that incompetent amateurs had been trusted with
this delicate task, which was absolutely not true. It was
(01:49):
somebody with a master of library science and archives of
management like the people also argued that they should have
just had the whole statue removed somewhere safer, or that
there was a lot of questions about why the time
capsule needed to be removed in the first place. A
lot of people wanted it and its contents to go
back where it was. So then another time capsule was
(02:13):
removed from the old State House a couple of months later,
and this one dated back to and it had been
put behind the corner stone by Paul Revere, then Governor
of Massachusetts, Sam Adams and Colonel William Scully, and so
based on what had happened with that first Time capsule,
we were really careful about what details we included when
(02:34):
we put it up on our Facebook. We noted that
it had been taken out as part of a repair
to a water leak behind the cornerstone, and we specified
that professional professional conservators had removed it, and that it
was going to be x rayed and open under controlled conditions,
and that it was going to be put back after
its contents had been displayed for the public for a while. Holly,
(02:54):
do you also remember this, yes, because people were still
so mad. They were there's a fascinating reaction I think
that people have with time capsules and it it's I
couldn't break down the psychology of it because it varies
a lot, but there were definitely some angry responses. Yeah,
people were still really mad this time. They were mad
(03:14):
that the times capsule was going to be put back,
which was what people had wanted to happen with the
other time capsules. So at this point I kind of
never wanted to mention time capsules in the context of
the show again, which is one of the reasons why
neither Time capsule was in the unearthed episodes. But then
this April I got the chance to actually see the
(03:35):
contents of that Cornerstone time capsule while they were on
display at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and there
was literally a line all the way around the room
to see it. It stretched way out into adjoining galleries.
Was just like in this little display case that was
full of coins and newspapers. Uh. Part of this is
because the time capsule was really small, so there was
(03:57):
a little display case people were way eating to see into.
But part of it is because people care, apparently care
a whole lot about time capsules. Yeah, and I feel
compelled to mention that this sort of interesting um discussion
that sometimes got a little heated on our Facebook page,
that is not the only place that these were happening.
If you looked at news sites that were posting about it,
(04:18):
their comments sections were having very similar things play out. Yeah,
there was just angriness everywhere. So we're gonna talk about
time capsules today, maybe explore some of the reasons people
get so excited about them. Yes, and the tradition of
burying stuff really goes back almost to the beginning of
human history. The most obvious example is that most of
(04:39):
the world's cultures have at some point buried artifacts, letters, trinkets,
and other objects as parts of funeral rituals. People have
also been deliberately placing objects into building foundations and cornerstones
for thousands of years. For example, in Mesopotamia, a common
practice was to bury objects and building foundations for the
(05:00):
purpose of sanctifying the space and protecting it, or maybe
to commemorate something that was related to the building or
its builders or where it was being built. This practice
has continued throughout the ages and all over the world,
and it has also included embedding items of religious significance
in church cornerstones, and the idea that these deposits might
(05:22):
one day be discovered again has also cropped up at
various times throughout history. For example, around the seventh century
b c, Assyrian king as Her Heaven had relics and
clay tablets put in the foundations of monuments, saying that
he quote deposited them in the foundations and left them
for future times. But all of these burials of stuff
(05:43):
are a little different from the idea of a time capsule.
Although people of the past did sometimes think or write
about how future generations might some days stumble upon their
funerary deposits and their foundational deposits, which are what those
things are called. Uh, that was really secondary to their purpose.
They were being buried for some other reason, and the
idea that somebody might come dig them up later was
(06:05):
secondary to that. But in a time capsule, on the
other hand, people intentionally gather and store objects with the
specific plan that someone else is going to open them later,
and usually there's a specified time frame for what later means,
and for the time capsule purists, it's only a true
time capsule if there's a specific end date for the
(06:26):
thing to be opened again. This means that while a
letter from a six year old to his or her
future self to be opened ten years later is a
time capsule according to this definition, but a giant room
of artifacts to be opened at some undetermined time in
the future technically isn't. Neither are time capsules that include
those same sorts of things but are shot into space
(06:46):
to be one day opened by aliens. Maybe so basically,
the end date is really like the definer of what
isn't isn't a time capsule. Another aspect of time capsules
is that they're preserving usually a snapshot of everyday lie
when they were sealed, and while there are definitely time
capsules that have a much grander scope than that, they
almost always also include things like coins, newspapers, photographs, letters
(07:11):
from notable people, and everyday items that are kind of
meant to give future generations a glimpse of what life
used to be like. This, including of everyday life snapshots,
is also why accidental preservations of everyday life, like say
the ruins of Pompeii, are sometimes described as time capsules.
(07:32):
And although there are time capsules buried all over the world,
the practice is largely a tradition that came from and
flourished in the United States, and there are a couple
of reasons for this. A big one is that the
first most famous examples of time capsules, which we're going
to talk about in just a bit, we're all developed
in the United States. But sociologists and psychologists also theorized
(07:54):
that another reason that the United States has been so
intent on encapsulating history, to say it to the future,
is that as a nation, the history of the United
States is pretty short. There were definitely people in North
America long before the United States was a thing, but
European presence in North America only goes back a few
hundred years. So the theory goes that people kind of
(08:17):
subconsciously want to instantly create something that counts as history
in the eyes of future generations. And we're going to
talk about some specific examples of time capsules after we
have a brief forward from a sponsor. We're going to
talk about the first true time capsule to start off with,
and the first time we know of that people sealed
(08:39):
things away with the specific intent that they would be
brought out again at a particular date in the future
was for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and that
took place in eighteen seventy six. It had a century
safe that was meant to be opened in nineteen seventy six.
There might be earlier examples of time capsules out there that,
(09:00):
in addition to having been buried or sealed away, also
had a specified opening date, but this is the first
one we actually have documentation of. And the century safe
looked just like a safe, but with a purple velvet lining,
which is a detail I personally love. Uh. This safe
contained photographs, a book on temperance, and signatures of visitors
(09:20):
to the Centennial Exhibition, among other things. It was stored
under the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capital and opened
in nineteen seventy six. As intended, a new capsule, buried
in nineteen seventy six is to be opened in twenty
seventy six. Even though the Century Safe was the first
true time capsule, the words time capsule had not been
(09:42):
coined yet. That did not happen until nineteen thirty eight
leading up to the nineteen nine World's Fair. G Edward Pendre,
who was a public relations executive for Westinghouse Electric and
Manufacturing and gets the credit for coming up with the term. Also, uh,
for a while, because of the shape of what they
were building, you thought about calling it a time bomb. Uh.
(10:06):
I'm kind of glad that didn't take off. Um. Before
the word time capsule was coined, people normally called these
sorts of things safes or boxes, or similar generic terms.
Westinghouse was involved with all of this because it was
constructing the physical container for the World's Fair Time Capsule,
which was to stand a ground until sixty thirty nine,
(10:28):
otherwise known as five thousand years from its start date.
Because these capsules were supposed to stay buried for so long,
the containers had to be impervious to just about any
kind of damage that you could think of. The end
result was a seven and a half foot long or
two point two meter torpedo like tube made of a
non corrosive alloy with several interior layers meant to protect
(10:51):
the contents. These contents included cigarettes, men's and women's grimming tools, magazines,
and amples of seeds and fabrics. There's also a twenties
two thousand page microfilm essay, and there are letters from
such figures as Albert Einstein and then m I T
(11:12):
President Carl T. Compton. There was huge, huge fanfare around
the burying of this time capsule, and there's also a
total replica of it and its contents at the George
Westinghouse Museum. Running concurrently with the creation of the first
Westinghouse time capsule was the Crypt of Civilization, and I
know a lot about this one. This is an incredibly
(11:33):
huge and involved time capsule at Oglethorpe University, which is
here in Atlanta and where I used to work. Oglethorpe
President Thornwell Jacobs led this project, which is an attempt
to document all of human history. The idea is that
future archaeologists could just consult the material from this vault
instead of having to painstakingly recreate an idea of how
(11:54):
the world worked by piecing together information from lots of
different dig sites. The of Civilization today is on a
lower level of the administration building at Oglethorpe. And in
addition to all the physical items which are inside, which
are a lot things enormous, it contains more than six
hundred thousand pages of microfilm which document all sorts of
(12:15):
historical information. So this crypt was sealed on May ninety
and it's not supposed to be opened again until the
year eighty one thirteen, And this is six thousand, one
hundred seventy seven years from when it was filled up.
The idea is that as of nineteen forty there were
six thousand, one hundred seventy seven years of recorded history.
(12:39):
This crypt acts as like a midpoint between the beginnings
of recorded history and six thousand, one hundred seventy seven
years in the future when people can just open this
thing up to find out all about the past. Yeah,
And it's just a big door, a big metal door
that you walk by when you're in the Admin building.
(13:00):
It has engraving on it, but it's just the door
that's there that never opens. Because people were inspired by
the first Westinghouse time Capsule and Oglethorpe's Crypt of Civilization,
the time capsule Heyday released fan from nineteen five to
nine two. Because of the Centennial Exhibition, one years became
a popular time limit for time capsules to remain sealed.
(13:23):
There are also some connections between that first Westinghouse time
capsule and the Crypt that Oglethorpe so g Edward Pendre
had actually called for public support of the Crypt project
as it was being developed, and conversely, one of the
letters inside the first Westinghouse time capsule is a letter
(13:47):
from then Oglethorpe president Thornwell Jacobs um so that like
there was a lot of crossover between those two projects, uh,
which I think is pretty cool. We're also now I
can just talk about some other notable examples of time capsules,
and this is not at all an exhaustive list, not
even of the ones that are really big and impressive.
(14:10):
Westinghouse created a second time capsule for the nineteen sixty
eight New York World's Fair, and it's almost like an
update to the first one. It's the exact same size
and shape, and it's buried about ten feet away, but
its contents include things that didn't exist when the previous
time capsule had been put into the grounds. Includes birth
control pills, an artificial heart valve, credit cards, information about
(14:35):
atomic energy, and other more modern as of nineteen sixty
eight stuff. Both the first Westinghouse time capsule and the
second one are supposed to be opened in sixty nine
thirty nine together, so that second one is sort of
like a supplement to the first one rather than a
whole separate thing with a separate opening date. Two identical
(14:57):
time capsules were made for expos seventy in a Socca, Japan,
and one of these is to stay sealed for five
thousand years, and the other is intended to be opened
every one hundred years after an initial opening in the
year two thousand and One reason for this plan is
to check in and make sure everything's okay, but the
other is to update the time capsules contents so it
(15:18):
kind of becomes an ongoing living archive record. And these
time capsules are shaped like kettles and filled. They weigh
two point one to metric tons and although their purpose
was to detail in a very broad cross section life
in nineteen seventy, which means that they include lots and
lots of everyday items. There's also historical information including leaflets, films,
(15:41):
and other recordings, uh, including artifacts from the bombing of Hiroshima.
And you can actually see the total contents of all
these things online. Uh, they are available, and there is
so much stuff jammed into them. Yeah, I really I
had this moment where I was lummoxed because I stumbled
across this thing, UH that had, you know, a a
(16:05):
comprehensive list of everything that's in there, and there are
pictures of a lot of it. And I am used
to when you see older pictures of things that were
taken with earlier digital cameras, they look kind of terrible.
And I had this moment where I just forgot that
there were there were film cameras in nineteen seventy. You
can you can scan pictures from nineteen seventy or film
(16:27):
from seventy like that still exists, that didn't go away.
So I had this this moment. But I feel silly confessing,
but I still want to confess. For I was like, Wow,
where did they get all these pictures from all right cameras,
they were still a thing, Tracy, it had been a
long day. Um. There is a one year time capsule
(16:48):
that was created in Juneo, Alaska in n and this
one is huge because it was created using thousands of
items that were collected from Juneau residents. It's housed in
a convert lobby of a government building and you can
see some of the contents through two windows that go
to the outside. It's also lit with electric lights that
can be changed from the outside, so it's it can
(17:09):
be lit while still being totally sealed up. That's a
pretty cool feature. Uh. There's a fortieth anniversary time castle
that was buried in Disneyland in Anaheim, California, on July
seventeenth of nine, and that is to be opened on
that same date in the year. Here's hoping I'm there
for that. Yeah, it's like it's hotly gonna go. Uh.
(17:32):
It does look like a castle, which is why it
is called that. Um. Really, a hundred years is a
pretty standard time for a time capsule now, and then
we have these really fascinating millennial ones that go on
for a thousand years and beyond. But when the Internet
took off and things started changing at a super rapid pace.
(17:53):
M I T made a time capsule of the Online
World CORC at the Sloane School of Management, and that
one was to be opened after five years because the
Internet was evolving so rapidly. Aside from those that we've
just mentioned, all over the world there are boxes of documents, coins,
and household items just waiting to be dug up. And
(18:14):
we'll talk about what can go wrong on that front
after we have another quick word from a sponsor. So
the sad truth is, as much as people like the
idea of burying things for posterity, a lot of time
capsules just fail. In some cases they haven't even made
it to their burial or their ceiling. There was a
time capsule made for the US by Centennial that went
(18:36):
on a national tour with signatures from all over the
country that we're supposed to be collected and put inside,
and it made it through that whole tour, but then
was stolen from the truck at the burial site before
it could actually be buried. Capsules and their contents have
also been lost thanks to leaks, demolitions, and people just
forgetting that they were buried in the first place, or
(18:57):
that they existed at all. So, in addition to trying
to preserve all of human history up to nineteen forty
in the Cryptic Civilization, Oglethorpe is also trying to keep
track of all those time capsules so that nothing else
gets lost, and that's via the International Time Capsule Society,
which was established in nine. Yeah. One of the reasons
that they really wanted to get that time capsule out
(19:19):
of the lions Head Statue was because they did not
really know how it had been packaged and whether everything
and there had already been destroyed because of water, which
it hadn't, which was great. Uh. But there's also the
fact that a lot of times what's inside a typical
time capsule turns out to be really underwhelming once it's opened.
(19:40):
The very nature of time capsules means that a lot
of times they're full of newspapers and coins and photographs people, uh,
letters from people who were famous a hundred years ago
but nobody knows who they are now, and basically obsolete junk.
There's even a article in the Onion titled newly on
Earth time Capsule just full of useless old crap, which
(20:03):
made fun of both people's responses to what you usually
find when you open a time capsule and the types
of things that people select to put in there. Like
there's there's several layers of humor going on. Uh, this
is actually kind of funny to me. How often people
open a time capsule and like, no one is impressed
with what was inside because it's just newspapers and coins.
(20:26):
And yet when the time capsule was made, there were
knocked down, drag out fights about what to put inside
of there. Oh yeah, people are as angry about what
to put in time capsules as they were within all
of our Facebook posts about taking them out, because they
want to make sure the exact correct picture of that
time period is created with the contents. But even if
(20:50):
people didn't find their contents boring, more often than not,
the same objects placed inside time capsules are also preserved
better at museums and other archives. It's very rare that
someone opens a time capsule to discover something that's actually
a unique find. Usually you can see a better preserved
one of the exact same thing in one or many museums. However,
(21:15):
all of that said, time capsules usually inspire an interest
in history and some civic pride, at least in the
short term, and that counts when they're created and again
when they're opened, and especially for the ones they are
meant to stay sealed up for thousands of years, the
containers themselves can involve tremendous feats of engineering. This has
especially been true for all of these ones. They're supposed
(21:38):
to stay sealed up for many thousands of years. So
while people might classify their contents into the category of
worthless junk, their creation has a different type of worth.
And back to those time capsules that we talked about
at the very beginning of the show, the Lion statue
is back on top of the old State House, complete
(21:58):
with a new time capsule, and this time it's in
the lions scroll, so future generations will have easier access
to it. Among the contents of that capsule are an
iPhone five. Apple apparently would not provide an iPhone six
for this Foreign Relations of the United States nineteen seventy
seven to nineteen eighty volume three to replace a copy
(22:18):
of Foreign Relations of the United States eighteen ninety six.
It was in the prior box basically to fill space,
a number of letters and photos and a Boston Marathon Medal.
The original items were on display at the Old State
House for several weeks over December fourteen and into January.
The items inside were delicate enough that after that point
(22:39):
they were returned to the archives for preservation. Yeah, they
were actually preserved incredibly well, uh, considering how old the
time capsule was and how it had just been in
this statue out in the elements for so long. But
they did want to make sure that they lasted long
into the future, so they didn't stand public display for
all that long. The time capsule that was removed from
(23:00):
the cornerstone at the Old State House is also going
to go back in June, and it's going to include
its original contents having been cleaned and restored, along with
some new items along in the same vein basically what
was in there before. We're newspapers and coins to things
of that nature. Um. Its original contents were displayed at
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston during March and April.
(23:24):
The Bostonian Society and the Museum of Fine Arts also
both documented what was inside those boxes and put lots
of pictures and details on their websites. Yeah, so people
felt like they were being hidden away from public view.
They really really weren't. Tracy, Can you now have a
little bit of listener mail for us. I do have
(23:45):
a little bit of listener mail. Before I do that,
I have a correction, and it is a correction to
our Luisa ma Alcott episode in which, uh, in one
sentence we say that she got typhoid and in another
intance we say that she got typhus. And we know
those are two different diseases. And have you even talked
about those being two different diseases on the show yet
(24:08):
I messed it up in my note taking it. So
some days are better than others. You didn't and I didn't,
and our producer Nol didn't. No one caught it. It's
a thing that happened sometimes, so uh, I apologize for
that error. Our our listener mail is from Katie, and
(24:29):
Katie says, Dear Tracy and Holly, I love your podcast
and I was so excited to hear the episode about
the history of special education. As a moderate to severe
disabilities special education teacher as well as an instructor for
college level special education courses, it was very exciting to
have you share this information with your listeners. Like in
other civil rights movements, our country has come a long
(24:51):
way in improving the treatment of individuals with disabilities. One
part of the history of special education that you did
not talk about is standardized assessment. With a child left behind,
we must administer a state assessment to all children, regardless
of disability. This includes children that have the most severe disabilities.
Like other standardized assessments, these are created by the state
(25:12):
that administers them. While this sounds like a step in
the right direction, often these alternate assessments are not a
valid measure of student learning for low incident students. Many
of them involve using common Core standards and are presented
at a level that most of the students taking it
cannot access. At the end of your podcast, you made
a comment that even though special education teachers have good intentions,
(25:32):
often it's difficult to get i EPs written and implemented.
For many of us that teach students with moderate severe disabilities,
the assessment plays a large role in this struggle. The
assessments often have a portfolio component component of some sort
that require the teacher to create and implement work samples
and probes for the assessments. This is very time consuming
and often takes away from the time that we have
(25:52):
to work with the students on functional skills and interact
with them at their level. There are a few initiatives
in the US that are working on creating an assessment
that would be a more valid measure of student growth
for MSD students. These initiatives are still several years from
being completed, and it will be up to the states
to adopt them. Uh And then she goes on to
(26:13):
suggest a topic for the future. UM, So, thank you
Katie for writing in This was actually UH my mom's
experience with the children that she worked in with When
she was working in residential care for children with multiple disabilities.
She worked with a lot of children who, like their
i EP goals, would not be about things like learning
(26:33):
to read or write. They would be about things like
learning to swallow independently, or like learning to make eye
contact with other people. So it was a definitely a
different world than what people usually think of as education.
But those things all still counted as learning, but definitely
would not be included on some kind of state assessment
of their skills. So thank you, Katie. UH. If you
(26:57):
would like to write to us about this or any
other topic. We're at his three podcast at how stuff
works dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot
com slash miss in history and on Twitter at miss
in History. Our tumbler is at misson history dot tumbler
dot com and are also on Pinterest at pinterest dot
com slash missed in History. You have a spreadshirt store
at misson history dot spreadshirt dot com full of phone
(27:18):
cases and shirts and whatnot. If you would like to
learn more about what we talked about today, you can
come to our parent company's website, that is how stuff
works dot com. Write the word archaeology in the search
bar and you will learn about how we do most
of our learning about past when it comes to digging
things up, which is more through archaeological study than through
time capsules, which are often cool but not often actually
(27:41):
archaeologically notable doing at our website, which is missed in
history dot com, and you can find show notes and
an archive everything that we have ever done in terms
of our episodes, and lots of other cool stuff. So
you can do all that and a whole lot more
at how stuff works dot com or miss the history
dot com for more onness and thousands of other topics
(28:04):
doesn't has to works on moon.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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