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Flushing Meadow is not
a dazzling world's fair legacy site. Indeed, some days it seems
more like a place of retreat rather than the former home of two
bustling expositions that gathered the world's greatest minds
and talents and let them loose to create a vision of the future.
But while many billions of dollars were spent transforming this
former Queens ash dump into a park, it should be noted that the
two New York World's Fairs held here did have an impact belied
by today's setting. One is the indelible impression they made
on the public mind. The World of Tomorrow-the world of freeways,
planned communities, TV, intelligent machines, and modern conveniences
brought to you by benevolent corporations-largely shaped our
expectations of what the late 20th century and early 21st centuries
would bring. Indeed, those promises have largely come to pass
(though not without controversy and discontent). Second is a
less obvious legacy-one hidden by intention. For Flushing Meadow
is a sacred precinct of a kind, a place where the seeds of the
past have been buried for the benefit of a far future none of
us will know.
Buried 50 feet
underground, and indicated by a modest inscribed granite capstone,
are two of the world's most ambitious time capsules. Each was
placed there by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which
built exhibits around them for their pavilions at both the 1939-40
and 1964-5 fairs. The 1939 capsule-actually buried at the Westinghouse
pavilion site in 1938, prior to the fair's opening-was the world's
very first time capsule. The term was coined for the project
(an alternative was "time bomb"), and newsreel and
newspaper coverage made it a household word. Time Capsule II,
as the 1965 update was called, was a copycat project designed
to bring the historic record up to date, including major developments
that had occurred during "the rush of events," as Westinghouse
phrased it, following 1938. These included World War II, atomic
power, the Beatles, and manned space flight, among other things.
Together, these two capsules hold a compact record of human accomplishment
as it stood at mid-century. If they are recovered and opened
on schedule, they could make another series of headlines (or
their equivalent) in 5,000 years, in the year 6939 AD to be precise.
The Westinghouse
time capsules bred a phenomenon that is highly popular to this
day. Thousands each year, and perhaps tens of thousands during
the last 60 years, have been buried, hidden, or stowed away to
commemorate occasions of all kinds, from major anniversaries
such as the US Bicentennial to high school graduations to the
opening of a new mall. Some space craft even now are carrying
time capsule-like messages and recordings into deep space. Indeed,
both the initiation of new ventures and the celebration of old
ones seem to be occasions for depositing capsules crammed with
our memories, predications, and memorabilia. The Westinghouse
time capsules have inspired us to celebrate our knowledge, our
heritage, and our hopes. They are a means for us to express our
collective ego and act on our instinct for self-preservation.
And, not least important, if the Westinghouse capsules and their
offspring work as intended, they may one day have a profound
impact on the future. Centuries hence, their finders may be as
moved as we by tapping in to the hearts and minds of the ancients.
It's no wonder
that Westinghouse chose the face of the legendary Roman figure
Janus to adorn its brochure issued to commemorate the sinking
of the shaft that would hold Time Capsule II. The text refers
to Janus as the Roman god of beginnings, but he was also the
symbol of gateways: his two faces looked to the past and future
simultaneously, which is exactly what a time capsule does. For
us today, it represents tomorrow; for its finders, it will be
a window on the past.
That Janus face
is appropriate too for its suggestion that time capsules are
part of an older, even pagan, tradition. Humans have buried objects
with the intention that they be found at a later date for thousands
of years. An example are the foundation deposits of the ancient
Mesopotamians, who often included messages to future finders
on clay tablets buried in temples, city walls, and other important
civic structures. Even in the legend of Gilgamesh we have an
example of how this ancient hero saved civilization from disaster
by finding information preserved on tablets hidden before the
Great Flood.
"He saw
what was secret, discovered what was hidden, he brought back
a tale of before the Deluge."
In the Buddhist
tradition, certain teachings have been recorded and hidden with
the idea that they will be found when the world is ready for
the next level of revelation. In Bhutan, Buddhists have buried
tormas, small ritual figurines which often contain predictions
for the future. A giant version of a torma is the Sun Tower,
the landmark of Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, site of another significant
world's fair time capsule project.
The symbolism
connecting the future with building, inherited from the Babylonians,
is reflected in Western Civilization through stories of the construction
of Solomon's Temple in the Bible and the symbolic language of
the New Testament which refers to Christ as the "cornerstone"
of Christianity. This tradition was revived-or kept alive-by
ancient and Medieval masons. During the Middle Ages, the laying
of altars and the setting of cathedral and church cornerstones
was often attended by elaborate ceremony. This no doubt resonated
with older, pagan traditions of burying votive objects at sacred
sites, such as Stonehenge.
In the 17th century,
during what has been called the Rosicrucian Renaissance, there
was a widespread interest in the recovery of ancient wisdom.
This period saw the rediscovery and publication of the works
of Plato and the Neo-Platonic Hermetic Corpus, both of which
fueled a fascination with alchemy, esoteric ideas, and secret
societies. In some respects, a kind of proto-time capsule is
described in early Rosicrucian literature, where ancient knowledge
is said to be kept hidden in the tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz,
the Rosicrucian order's founder, and that this knowledge was
rediscovered at precisely the time specified on a brass plaque
on the tomb's door.
Interest in the
recovered secrets of the Rosicrucians coincided with the evolution
of speculative Freemasonry, fraternal societies founded on philosophical
principles rather than on one's skill with bricks and mortar.
In the 18th century, the Masons developed of a number of increasingly
elaborate symbolic rituals. One of the most popular, and widely
performed in public, was the cornerstone laying ceremony, which
involved the ritual blessing of building cornerstones and, often,
the placement inside of a container, such as a small copper or
lead box, holding documents, books, coins, and other items to
be recovered presumably when the building was razed or remodeled.
These ceremonies were widely practiced in America. For nearly
200 years, virtually every major public building in Washington,
DC began with a Masonic cornerstone ritual. The first and most
famous of these was performed by George Washington who, in full
Masonic regalia, helped lay the first cornerstone of the US Capitol
in 1793. In 1851, at the laying of the cornerstone for the Capitol's
extension, Daniel Webster painted a vivid oratorical scene that
captured a sense of the ancient and mystical tradition Washington's
performance represented:
"He heads
a short procession over these naked fields; he crosses yonder
stream on a fallen tree; he ascends to the top of this eminence,
whose original oaks of forest stood thick around him as if the
spot had been devoted to Druidical worship, and here he performs
the appointed duty of the day."
Cornerstone ceremonies
became widespread in the 19th century, and are commonly practiced
today with or without the Masons. Many of the time capsules you
hear about, whether a new one buried or an old one recovered,
are not really time capsules per se, but rather cornerstone boxes
or capsules that serve a similar, though largely ceremonial,
function.
What is the difference
between cornerstone boxes and time capsules? According to William
Jarvis, a librarian at Washington State University who has long
studied time capsules and has written a book about them to be
published in mid-2002, the distinction is that a time capsule's
creator leaves instructions concerning when the container is
to be recovered and opened. An Egyptian tomb, Al Capone's vault,
a treasure chest, and a cornerstone box are not, strictly speaking,
time capsules. They are burial sites, accidental repositories,
money hordes, or ritual objects with no particular temporal destination
in mind. But a container put away with the intention that the
information and artifacts therein will be useful for people in
the future, and which is buried with the idea that it will be
opened at a specified time, that is a time capsule. The Oxford
English Dictionary defines "time capsule" this way:
"...a
container used to store for posterity a selection of objects
thought to be representative of life at a particular time."
By that definition,
one of the first time capsules originated in the United States
and was associated with a world's fair. In 1876, a Civil War
widow named Annie Deihm was responsible for the Centennial Safe,
also called the Century Safe. Displayed in the grand Memorial
Hall at the US Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the safe
contained a number of items from the fair: photographs and autographs
of prominent government officials, a silver Tiffany inkstand,
temperance literature, signatures of fair attendees, even a pen
presented by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. After the fair,
the safe was sealed and shipped to Washington, DC where it was
to be prominently displayed in Statuary Hall. Instructions were
left that the safe was to be opened by America's "chief
magistrate" (i.e. the president) on July 4, 1976. The keepers
of the Capitol, however, were reluctant guardians of the safe,
regarding it as something of a white elephant. It was shuffled
off to various corners and largely forgotten for most of the
next century. Nevertheless, it was recovered and, on July 1,
1976, opened by President Gerald Ford as part of the US Bicentennial
festivities. The Centennial Safe is not only one of the earliest
examples of a modern time capsule, but one of the first that
worked as intended.
In the mid-1930s,
the time capsule concept as we know it did not really exist outside
of cornerstone deposits and Centennial Safes. But in 1935, a
far-thinking man, Dr. Thornwell Jacobs, the president of Oglethorpe
University in Atlanta, Georgia, conceived a project that would
put his school on the map and play a key role in world history.
It would be called the Crypt of Civilization, and in it would
be a complete record of our civilization. A modern-day King Tut's
tomb, it would contain machines, tools, models, samples of man-made
materials and technology, microfilm and written records. There
would be toys, dioramas, jewelry, clothes, musical instruments,
books, motion pictures and sound recordings, chewing gum, beer,
snuff, hashish-the endless flotsam and jetsam of everyday life.
This would be no amateur effort: the latest technology would
be employed to create and preserve a permanent record of our
civilization. All of it would be contained in a huge vault under
one of the gothic halls on the Oglethorpe campus. Jacobs set
the time for the opening, and he even issued special tickets
made of "imperishable metal" for Noon, May 28, 8113
AD. Crooner Bing Crosby said he would attend, schedule permitting.
The Crypt was sealed in 1940 and still awaits its destiny.
In 1936, an article
about the Crypt appeared in the Literary Digest, authored by
a man named G. Edward Pendray, the Digest's science editor. Pendray
was a remarkable promoter and popularizer of science: a science
fiction author under the pen name of Gawain Edwards, journalist,
science editor of the New York Herald Tribune, co-founder and
president of the American Rocket Society, an early champion of
space exploration. By 1937, he was also an employee of Westinghouse
and charged with convincing the public that the company was more
forward-thinking than its rival, General Electric. It was decided
that the company would have a pavilion at the New York World's
Fair in 1939, something in keeping with the World of Tomorrow
theme. The laying of the pavilion's cornerstone was seen by Pendray
as a great opportunity for some pre-fair publicity, but soon
he realized that every pavilion would be breaking ground in Flushing
Meadow. How to set Westinghouse apart? Remembering Thornwell
Jacobs' Crypt, Pendray decided to do something similar, but with
a twist. Westinghouse would create a miniature crypt-civilization
stuffed into a sleek, state-of-the-art seven-and-a-half-foot-long
metal tube, a kind of streamlined torpedo, that would be buried
for posterity. The project would give Westinghouse a chance to
show off a new copper alloy they had developed-Cupaloy-and the
ingenuity of its engineers. The time capsule, as Pendray brilliantly
dubbed it, would be forward-thinking all right. It's destination
would be 5,000 years in the future.
The project proved
to have enormous appeal, and the newspapers and newsreels ate
it up. Partly, the project appealed to the public's growing interest
in technology and futurism, after all, this was the Golden Age
of popular science and science fiction. In addition, the trouble
brewing in Europe and the threat of world war scared many people.
Even scholars like Thornwell Jacobs were keenly aware from the
study of history that all civilizations rise and fall, many of
them disastrously. Creating a kind of Noah's Ark of knowledge
wasn't necessarily such a far-fetched idea-in fact, it might
prove to be a practical necessity. Many smaller time capsules
inspired by the Westinghouse project and buried for 50 years
or so on the eve of World War II have been found to contain messages
indicating that many people did not take America's survival for
granted.
The time capsule
proved to be such a publicity success, that before a single fairgoer
had set foot in the World's Fair, everyone had heard of the Westinghouse
time capsule. Of course, the real challenge wasn't publicizing
the time capsule in 1939, it was keeping alive the memory of
the capsule so that it would be recovered in 6939 AD. To that
end, Westinghouse went to great lengths to ensure that the time
capsule could be located and comprehended by its finders. An
ambitious Book of Record was written, detailing the project and
containing information about its exact location. Maps and coordinates
were included, as well as estimates as to how far it may migrate
over time underground. A key to the English language, assumed
to be long dead, was included. More than 3,000 copies in two
versions-hard and soft-bound--on acid free paper were sent to
libraries, universities, museums, and monasteries the world over
in the hope that at least some would survive and point the way.
Though no current
inventory has been taken as far as I am aware, the success of
The Book of Record seems mixed, based strictly on anecdotal evidence.
Some libraries have their copies, often kept in rare book rooms
or vaults. Others copies seem to be missing. When I visited the
Library of Congress to do research for an article on time capsules
in 1989, none of the library's copies could be located. Not all
copies were sent to museums: some people involved in the project
were given copies. I talked to the daughter of a man who worked
on the project for the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. She told
me they treasured her father's copy for years until it was accidentally
sold in a family garage sale. Westinghouse executives also sent
some copies to customers and clients: I have seen at least one
copy for sale with an accompanying letter indicating that it
was sent for promotional reasons. Both copies I own contain a
folded sheet apparently written under the assumption that not
all original owners were institutions. It reads:
"This
is an authentic copy of The Book of Record of the Time Capsule.
The edition is limited, and it is not expected that the book
will ever be reprinted in its present permanent form. It is a
message to the future, and should be carefully preserved. If
you do not wish to keep it, please send it to a library, museum
or other permanent repository."
The fact that
copies are in the hands of private collectors is probably good
news in the long run, offering yet one more route by which copies
may survive and perhaps avoid institutional turmoil and neglect.
At least one copy was sent to a lamasery in Tibet-before the
Chinese sacked and burned many of that country's libraries. I
doubt that the Dalai Lama brought it with him when he fled to
India. Such instability is a reminder that no institution is
a guaranteed haven for 50 years, let alone 5,000.
When Westinghouse
buried Time Capsule II in 1965, they promised to update The Book
of Record. Instead of doing a new book, they sent out notice
of the new capsule on a printed tip-in sheet describing the project.
This was sent to institutions holding copies of the original
book, and librarians and curators were asked to put this sheet
in their original copies. I have seen copies of this tip-in,
including in a copy at the Queens Museum at Flushing Meadow.
But most copies of The Book of Record I have seen do not have
it. I doubt many libraries understood what it was, and it could
certainly not be placed if the original copies were missing.
Plus, there was no way of distributing the tip-ins to people
who obtained private copies as gifts or on the collector's market.
In short, the record for the 1965 capsule is likely very incomplete.
Which may matter
not. Whoever digs and finds the 1939 capsule is likely to bump
into its stainless steel twin in a shaft only 10 feet away. Which
brings up another interesting issue about recovery of the time
capsules. While The Book of Record dutifully attempts to create
a trail of bread crumbs that will lead to the eventual discovery
of the time capsule, a bigger problem may be what will happen
if the capsule is found prematurely.
Since the time
capsule was "invented" in the 1930s, many thousands
have been buried but not all have reached their "destination."
Lost time capsules have been misplaced, poorly marked, or located
where recovery is not an option. A time capsule by the cast of
the TV series M*A*S*H, location unknown, may well be buried under
a new Marriott Hotel. A 1939 time capsule at MIT was placed under
the university's new cyclotron-but it was not opened on schedule
in 1989 because no one wanted to lift the 18-ton magnet on top
of it.
But another problem
is human fiddling. Time capsules have been stolen, tampered with,
and opened ahead of schedule. The official US Bicentennial Wagon
Train time capsule was supposed to be sealed on July 4, 1976
by President Gerald Ford, presumably fresh from his duty opening
the Centennial Safe just a few days before. But, the time capsule
was stolen before the ceremony at Valley Forge and has never
been recovered. In fall 2000, a 1949 KLM airline time capsule
in Utrecht, Holland was stolen just three days before it was
scheduled to be opened. And a foundation deposit in the base
of Nelson's Pillar in Dublin, Ireland was recently opened and
found to have been looted of its coins and contents. The chief
suspect: whoever poured the sealing rosin into the recess as
a preservative nearly 200 years ago. In early 2002, workers renovating
the Seattle Opera House, which had last been remodeled for the
1962 Century 21 Exposition, found a copper box containing two
time capsules which were duly opened. One was from 1928; the
other was a previously unknown capsule put together by the world's
fair organizers, and not intended to be opened until 2012. It
was wrongly, though rather harmlessly, opened a decade too early.
So The Book of
Record could lead mischief-makers to an important repository.
The time capsules' main protection is the labor to exhume them.
If the site is disturbed either intentionally or accidentally
before its time, an inscription on Time Capsule I pleads its
case to the better angels of our nature:
"If anyone
should come upon this capsule before the year 6939 let him not
wantonly disturb it, for to do so would deprive the people of
that era of the legacy here left them. Cherish it therefore in
a safe place."
Nice words, but
ones many people in history have not lived by. One only has to
think of the curses and warnings on Egyptian tombs to see how
such sentiments are regarded by scholars and treasure hunters
alike.
Other hazards
include the ravages of time, including the elements. Many time
capsules have been ruined due to water damage, an inherent problem
when anything is buried in the ground. The Flushing Meadow capsules
may face this problem in spades. The former wetland could be
a casualty, over time, of global warming. If the seas continued
to rise at current rates, the whole area could be 30 feet underwater
in 5,000 years. Of course, this could be offset by other climate
changes, as well as a rising of the landmass. It is simply too
early to tell what will happen over the next five millennia (let
alone predict next weekend's weather). The builders of the Westinghouse
capsules anticipated a water problem. Time Capsule I is made
of Cupaloy, an alloy of copper, chromium and silver. It was chosen
for its corrosion-resistant properties. While state-of-the-art
in 1938, the art had apparently changed by 1965. Time Capsule
II was made of Kromarc, a kind of stainless steel, also corrosion
resistant. In 1965, Westinghouse chemists also studied the soil
of the Flushing Meadow burial site and determined that it was
lacking in chloride ions which cause corrosion. They expressed
confidence that the time capsules would stand the test of time.
Another potential
hazard is manmade, and an example is not far from Queens. A number
of the buildings at the World Trade Center complex in lower Manhattan
contained cornerstone time capsules. One forensic architect I
talked to who had worked at the WTC estimated there may have
been as many as half a dozen. I have not been able to obtain
any information about the status of these capsules in the wake
of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, but certainly many
documents and valuables were destroyed in vaults and safety deposit
boxes at the World Trade Center. It is likely the contents of
at least some of these capsules, if not all, were lost.
Regardless of
their status, the remains of the World Trade Center time capsules
are comparatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things,
though recovering and reburying them would make a potent statement
about the resilience of America, and indeed, humanity. They are,
however, a part of a site that is indeed considered sacred to
many because of the tragedy that took place there. They are part
of our loss.
But Flushing
Meadow offers the potential for us to continue to develop an
alternative sacred site, one not sanctified in blood and misery,
but rather one that retains in its soil the optimism of the 20th
century. Here is a place where we have celebrated our achievements,
where we have looked both forward and backward, like Janus, to
see the best of what is, and the best of things to come. I was
struck by a comment by John Andrews, writing in the March 2002
issue of Fair News. After a recent visit to Flushing Meadow,
he wrote that he was relieved that a new project did not infringe
on the site's integrity. "The basic layout of the site remains
intact," he wrote. "This is important to those of us
who consider the grounds somewhat akin to sacred grounds that
should be retained in its original state insofar as is possible."
While Mr. Andrews was undoubtedly speaking from a historical
perspective, I believe his sense of sacredness is right on the
mark. As long as the Westinghouse time capsules remain in its
soil, carrying out their 5,000-year mission to the future, Flushing
Meadow is a place that deserves our care and protection, and
our passionate stewardship. It is alive not only with the ghosts
of the past, but more importantly with vessels carrying our collective
memory to the "uttermost generations."
As it says on
the dedication page of The Book of Record:
"All
the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.
Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee." Job XIV: 14-15
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