The Time Capsule as a Case in Point

ON THE 23RD OF SEPTEMBER 1938, the first ever so-called time capsule was buried at the site of the New York World's Fair, which was set to open in April 1939. To this day, it remains one of the most ambitious projects of its kind. Should the creators of the capsule have it their way, the cylindrically shaped, metal container, 7.5 feet tall and 8.75 inches in diameter, will not be unearthed until the year 6939 CE. The Westinghouse Time Capsule will then present its receiver from the far future with a tangible impression of the “achievements” of Western civilization on the eve of World War II. This, at least, is the scenario as imagined in the Book of Record, copies of which were deposited in the capsule and also distributed widely, including, in 3,649 copies, to lamaseries in Tibet, Shinto shrines in Japan, and Buddhist temples in India, and to 2,000 libraries, museums and universities across the world. Like the time capsule, the Book of Record was conceived by the Westinghouse Electric Company, in collaboration with a group of scientists, engineers, and advertising experts. The capsule's content was selected by way of a public idea contest under the direction of the vice president of the company; it provides a colorful display: from small items of daily use, such as a can opener, safety pin, and toothbrush, to samples of textiles and other materials, to all manner of seeds, banknotes, and other trifles, to texts and images on microfilm and contemporary newsreels. Framed by the capsule, such seemingly random everyday objects form a potentially meaningful snapshot of the beginnings of the consumer age.

That after 5,000 years the capsule's “message” might no longer be intelligible is something its creators took into account. They equipped it with a “Rosetta stone,” a linguistic apparatus intended to help reconstruct the information inside the capsule by way of a reconstruction of the language in which it is couched. In addition to the capsule itself, the intelligibility of its content is therefore perishable too, and hence requires protection from the various threats of loss and forgetting. Collecting has in this sense always been at once a “structure of objective devotion” and an “epistemological practice,” a practice that the collector can nevertheless only control to a certain degree.