Permanent Record

The top photo shows a 100-year-old sealed bronze time capsule that was recently opened in New York. The lower photo shows some of the capsule's contents -- newspapers, journals, yearbooks, a world almanac, and so on.

According to a New York Times article, the capsule was sealed on May 23, 1914, and was supposed to be opened 60 years later, on May 22, 1974. But before that could happen, the building that housed the capsule was demolished, and the capsule ended up in a storage warehouse. The 1974 unsealing was forgotten, as was the capsule itself until 1998, when it was rediscovered. It was finally opened last Wednesday at the New-York Historical Society (yes, they spell it with the hyphen). Some high school students who've been interning at the Society then presented the objects that they'll be placing in a new time capsule, to be opened in 2114. Those objects included the following (click to enlarge):

Time capsules have always struck me as sort of a big fuss over nothing. I get how they're supposed to be intriguing and all, but isn't there usually a list or other documentation of what's inside the capsule (like the photos of the contemporary objects shown above), and doesn't that pretty much eliminate any element of suspense of surprise? Couldn't you get a more interesting sense of the past just by poking around at a flea market or antiques shop?

I'm about to pose those questions (and others) to Nick Yablon, an academic who's something of a time capsule expert and has written a soon-to-be-published book on the topic. He's agreed to do a PermaRec interview, which I'll be posting here on the site shortly — stay tuned. Meanwhile, what do you folks think of time capsules? Post your thoughts in the comments.