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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 (continues on page 16) www.SpectrumMagazine.net
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