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Deihm's Century Safe being moved into place for the bicentennial celebrations, U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC, 1976. (Records of the Architect of the Capitol.)
Source publication
Although the term was coined at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, time capsules date back to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, when autographs, photographs, and other artifacts were sealed in various cities as tributes to the bourgeois elite. These memorial safes and chests, while related to cornerstone deposits, were inspired by new concerns about...
Contexts in source publication
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... of Colorado Springs, fifteen miles from the armed battles that broke out in 1894 in the Cripple Creek gold mines, that the time vessel acquired a radically new form and function. 49 The Century Chest, a steel box sealed on the campus of Colorado College in August 1901, was the product of a distinctly pessimistic outlook on the current troubles ( fig. 10). In one of over a hundred letters written in India ink on bond paper, addressed to the citizens of 2001, and sealed within large linen envelopes, its creator, the Jewish financier Louis Ehrich, articulated his sense that a piecemeal and peaceful solution was no longer viable ( fig. 11). A "great national calamity" was now not only ...
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... of a distinctly pessimistic outlook on the current troubles ( fig. 10). In one of over a hundred letters written in India ink on bond paper, addressed to the citizens of 2001, and sealed within large linen envelopes, its creator, the Jewish financier Louis Ehrich, articulated his sense that a piecemeal and peaceful solution was no longer viable ( fig. 11). A "great national calamity" was now not only unavoidable but in fact desirable-the only thing that could "purify" America and prevent it from "follow[ing] the downward path of the nations that have disappeared." Ehrich's resignation to some impending social rupture was shared by others who deposited letters in the Century Chest. ...
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... duty of preserving for future generations as vivid a picture of the present as possible. 51 He thus solicited articles by men and women on almost every aspect of the life of the city (or at least that of its middle class), from its religious, financial, and educational institutions to its slang words, clothing fashions, and leisure activities ( fig. 12). 52 And perhaps realizing that the two-dimensional, paperbound media of the earlier time vessels could not fully convey the texture of everyday life, he welcomed artifacts of material culture such as hairpins, badges, and department store fabric samples, along with phonographic wax cylinders of college songs-although not a cylinder ...
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... 12). 52 And perhaps realizing that the two-dimensional, paperbound media of the earlier time vessels could not fully convey the texture of everyday life, he welcomed artifacts of material culture such as hairpins, badges, and department store fabric samples, along with phonographic wax cylinders of college songs-although not a cylinder player ( figs. 13-15). 53 This emergent conception of a time vessel as a microcosm-or encapsulation-of a larger social whole was most visible, however, in the new uses to which it put the medium of photography. The Century Chest included hundreds of photographs, many of them wrapped in tin foil. Alongside the professional portraits, amateur Kodak snapshots, ...
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... typed rather than handwritten captions, Stevens provided sweeping views of the city's streets and public buildings; interior shots of its banks, offices, dental clinics, and stores (all eerily depopulated); glimpses of its private dwellings; and even details of its modern technologies of sanitation, lighting, communication, and transportation ( figs. 16-18). 54 Those photographs that did depict individuals, moreover, evince a turn from the exceptional to the typical. Images of prominent citizens were accompanied by those of the anonymous or the merely representative, such as "College Girl, Senior Class." This quest for the typical prompted one photographer to produce composite portraits ...
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... evince a turn from the exceptional to the typical. Images of prominent citizens were accompanied by those of the anonymous or the merely representative, such as "College Girl, Senior Class." This quest for the typical prompted one photographer to produce composite portraits of twelve male and twelve female members of the city's bourgeoisie ( fig. 19). Indebted to the pioneer of anthropometry, Sir Francis Galton, who invented the process of producing an average or generic face by superimposing multiple portraits on a single plate until individual features (or "deviations") blur into the background, these composite photographs embody a new faith in the statistical powers of the ...
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... and social ways," in both "town and country." 71 Even the defects of society were to be included, so that "future generations may know the exact measure of our wisdom and our ignorance, our achievements and our failures." 72 Indeed, like Ehrich, Konta confessed doubts about whether "our civilization will continue to develop without a break" (fig. 21). 73 This enlarged scope exceeded the capacity of a single individual, requiring a more extensive collaboration between the president; the appointed "officers" and their various "associates" drawn from the fields of librarianship, history, journalism; and "the professions." 74 Geographical extension was also required: while MHRA's ...
Citations
... The most critical African value for motivating political leadership for the demographic dividend is perhaps the age-long cultural norm of reverence for posterity. Also termed "posteritism" by other writers (Ehrich 1901;Yablon 2011), this important value expresses the sacred regard which Africans have for the highest good of posterity. While Africans are noted for their deep respect for elders, their devotion to posterity and future progeny runs much deeper. ...
A foremost challenge to the realisation of the accelerated economic growth of the demographic dividend in Africa remains the commitment of the region's political leadership to creating the enabling contexts to maximise the potential of its youthful population. This viewpoint considers three critical African cultural mores-the reverence-for-posterity norm; leader-as-community-proxy culture; and the elder tradition-that offer unique levers for fostering political leadership for the demographic dividend in Africa. Strategies for successfully tapping these cultural traditions require further research. ARTICLE HISTORY
The first feature film made about the design and deployment of the atomic bomb, The Beginning or the End (1947), begins with fake newsreel footage depicting the burial in a time capsule of a copy of the film and a projector to show it on. The scene, with its funereal overtones yet grim optimism that, even in the face of catastrophic destruction, the germ of civilization will endure, recalls the ceremonies surrounding the interment of the Westinghouse time capsule at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. Time capsules, this article argues, stand in a complex relation to war and temporality, seeking to at once anticipate and work through the challenge posed to futurity by the threat of global conflict. As a container, the capsule attempts to deliver and control the reception of a legible inventory of the present, yet the principle of selection and the impossibility of predicting how information might be received in the deep future – if it is received at all – threatens this aim. The dilemma faced by time capsule curators is, we argue with reference to William Burroughs’ and Brion Gysin’s so-called cut-up method of writing, one of control. By reading the time capsule through the cut-up, anticipated catastrophe can be seen to be functioning proleptically in the present and already active as a challenge to the capsule as proof against disaster.
