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REDWOOD CITY
THROUGH THE YEARS
Time Capsules
By Mary K. Spore-Alhadef, Librarian, Local History and Archives Collections, Redwood City Public Library
“Time capsules” are the modern
response to our desire to leave a
memento of our time and society to
future generations. Spurred, perhaps,
by the increasingly sophisticated
work of 20th-century archaeologists
in Pompeii, Knossos, Egypt and
Greece in revealing the way those
societies lived, 20th-century
scholars began to contemplate what
artifacts and writings would explain
this age to future researchers. With
modern technology, they thought about
how to preserve and present the
information they deemed worthy of
preservation.
The first “intentional” deposit
of materials meant to be found
by the people of a future age
was the “Crypt of Civilization,”
the brainchild of Dr. Thornwell
Jacobs, the energetic president of
Oglethorpe University in Atlanta,
Ga., who had re-established the
university in 1915. Writing in
Scientific American in 1936, he
proposed gathering a record of our
civilization, sealing it and storing it
to be opened in 8113. He calculated
that this was the same number of
years in the future as 4241 B.C.,
the date of the establishment of
the Egyptian calendar, was in the
past. Utilizing an abandoned but
watertight swimming pool beneath
Phoebe Hearst Hall on campus, the
university lined it with vitreous
porcelain and set about gathering a
record of modern life for discovery
in 8113.
Dr. Jacobs had engaged the
services of Thomas K. Peters, a man
of varied talents, who had made
the only newsreel footage of the
San Francisco earthquake in 1906,
worked at Luxor and Karnak, and
invented the first microfilm camera
to use 35 mm film. Peters became
the curator of the collections to
be placed in the crypt, storing
everything from dressed dolls and
an electric calculator to the plastic
toys and pop culture artifacts of the
1930s, including a script of “Gone
With the Wind,” and even a sealed
vial of beer, all in glass or glasslined
stainless-steel containers.
Using the new technology of the era,
he had a team of students microfilm
640,000 pages of fiction, classic
literature and scientific works. On
an extensive phonograph record
collection, he gathered the recorded
voices of major world leaders of
the time, from Hitler and Stalin
to Albert Einstein. He included
microfilm equipment, magnifiers
and both an electrical generator
and a windmill-powered generator,
in case electricity was not in use.
Thoughtfully, he included a device,
just inside the door, to teach the
English language should it be
extinct in 8113. After replacing all
the oxygen with nitrogen to prevent
decay, the vault was sealed with
a stainless-steel door, which was
welded shut in May 1940.
During the preparations for the
Crypt of Civilization, another
project that would gain far more
attention was in preparation. While
the planners of the 1939 World’s
Fair in New York City looked
to the future with the Trylon
and Perisphere, they were also
interested in presenting a portrait
of their own time to a future age.
The Westinghouse Corporation, a
major participant, conceived the
idea of burying an intentionally
selected collection of items to
be opened 5,000 years in the
future. The contents were to reflect
both the minutiae of daily life —
eyeglasses, watch, fountain pen,
seeds of common crops — and the
materials of which modern life
was constructed, everything from
metals and plastics to wool and
rayon. The broader social, industrial
and political themes of the era were
preserved on both microfilm and
newsreel, along with a microscope
and instructions for the construction
of the type of microfilm reader used
in libraries.
To house this collection, the
Westinghouse Corporation created a
90-foot-long, glass-lined cylinder of
cupaloy, a nonferrous alloy created
to resist corrosion. The newly
named “Time Capsule” was buried
on Sept. 23, 1938, the autumnal
equinox, under a monument in
Flushing Meadow, the site of the
Fair. To ensure the capsule being
found 5,000 years in the future, a
“Book of Record” was created and
sent to 3,000 libraries, monasteries
and museums worldwide in hope
that at least one of them would
survive across the bridge of time.
The “Book of Record” contains the
precise location of the capsule and
an instructional key on speaking the
English language should it not be in
common usage in 6939, when the
capsule is scheduled to be opened.
The second New York World’s
Fair in 1964–65 also produced a
Westinghouse Time Capsule, buried
with the first one under a granite
monument on Flushing Meadow
and also designed to be opened in
6939.
The traditional, large-scale
memorial building projects in
Redwood City’s history were
undertaken in the era after the 1906
earthquake and with WPA funds
in the 1930s. This was well before
the time when people thought
of including nothing more than
a handful of coins and a daily
newspaper in a new building’s
cornerstone on dedication day. It
was not until 1968, during the
city’s centennial celebration, that
Redwood City gave formal thought
to a time capsule intended for the
citizens of 2068. Historian Richard
Schellens and Dave Schutz, the
Redwood City Tribune editor who
had served as chairman of the
centennial committee, directed
the filling of a specially treated
redwood-and-glass box that had
been donated by the California
Redwood Association. Materials
from the centennial programs, an
outline of the city’s historic walking
trail, a prospectus of Redwood
Shores and a letter from Mayor
Sidney Herkner to his successor in
2068 were all placed in the capsule
casing. The capsule was buried near
City Hall.
Following the construction of the
current Redwood City City Hall
in 1996, it was decided to place a
time capsule in the new City Hall,
to be opened on March 27, 2047.
Probably the most unusual item
placed in this time capsule is then
Council Member Dick Claire’s
Hewlett Packard 10C calculator.
Claire told the writer that he used
this calculator to reconfigure the
construction costs so that the
building could be built with the
quality and beauty the city desired
within the funding available. He
therefore thought it should be in
the capsule because it was the tool
that made the building possible. He
has been quoted as intending to be
present at the opening in 2047 to
reclaim his calculator.
While doing repair work on the
entrance and parking area at the
front of the campus, Sequoia High
School found student-deposited
time capsules beneath many of
the class plaques that have been
a tradition since the school was
relocated from downtown to the
present campus in 1924. The class
capsules have been relocated and
archived in the school library’s care
in the school building.
In the wider world, the fascination
with time capsules has not only
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