5,000-Year Journey

Two years ago the publicity men of Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., who are proud of 20th-century civilization, decided to leave a memento of their civilization to the future. The memento was to be not just a written record, but a miniature museum, an assortment of characteristically 20th-century objects packed into a "Time Capsule." It just happened that the New York World's Fair was coming up, so they decided to address the capsule to savants of 6939--5,000 years after the Fair's first year.

At Westinghouse's World's Fair site on Long Island, they bored a narrow well 50 ft. deep, lined it with double steel tubing, stoppered it at the bottom with concrete and sand. The capsule, a cartridge seven and a half feet long, was made of a Westinghouse nickel and silver alloy copper, lined with Pyrex glass, emptied of air, filled with inert nitrogen. Among the objects which went into it were a woman's hat, razor, can opener, fountain pen, pencil, tobacco pouch with zipper, pipe, tobacco, cigarets, camera, eyeglasses, toothbrush; cosmetics, textiles, metals and alloys, coal, building materials, synthetic plastics, seeds; dictionaries, language texts, magazines (TIME among them), other written records on microfilm.

In order to make reasonably sure that archeologists of 6939 would know of the treasure consigned to them, Westinghouse sent books of record to world's leading libraries, telling how to calculate the date when the capsule should be opened, by use of the Gregorian, Chinese, Jewish, Mohammedan and Shinto calendars, and by astronomical time if no calendars survive.

Also given were the exact latitude and longitude of the capsule's well, calculated to less than an inch. In case the latitude and longitude figures should be falsified by continental creep, directions were given for locating the capsule with electromagnetic finders.

For two years Fairgoers have gaped at the capsule, gleaming at the bottom of its open well. One day this week, from a huge, hot caldron, 500 Ib. of petroleum pitch, chlorinated diphenyl and mineral oil were poured into the well, to act as a packing indefinitely resistant to moisture and soil acids. On the stroke of noon, the well was sealed. A crowd of spectators bared their heads. A bugle sounded taps. The capsule started on its long journey through time.

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