page_title: Westinghouse Time Capsules
section_title: 1939 Time Capsule I
hierarchical_section_title: Westinghouse Time Capsules / Capsule contents / 1939 Time Capsule I
caption_attribution_description: pin given to signer of Guest Book at Westinghouse pavilion
context_page_description: The Westinghouse Time Capsules are two time capsules prepared by the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company of common objects of the time for people of the 7th millennium to get. They are specially designed non-corrosive metal tubes 90 inches long and about nine inches in diameter. The tubes are buried fifty feet in the ground about ten feet apart at Flushing Meadows Park near New York City.
  There were record books about these time capsules given to thousands of libraries, museums, and other depositories worldwide to preserve the knowledge that they exist. Included was the information that they shouldn't be opened before the seventh millennium and where they can be located. Duplicates of the contents of the objects held for these people of the future are currently held in a history museum of the United States.
context_section_description: Among the 35 small, everyday items placed inside Time Capsule I were a fountain pen and an alphabet block set. Time Capsule I also contained 75 types of fabrics, metals, and plastics. Modern literature, contemporary art, and news events of the twentieth century were recorded on a microfilm "Micro-File" for placement in Time Capsule I; the "Micro-File" holds over ten million words and a thousand pictures, and has a small microscope for viewing. There are also instructions included on how to make both a large microfilm viewer and a motion picture projector for the newsreels.
  Also included in the capsule were copies of Life magazine, a kewpie doll, one dollar in change, a pack of Camel cigarettes, a 15-minute RKO Pathe Pictures newsreel, a Lilly Daché hat, and millions of words of text put on microfilm rolls which included a Sears Roebuck catalog, a dictionary, and an almanac. A variety of seeds were placed in the time capsule including wheat, corn, oats, tobacco, cotton, flax, rice, soy beans, alfalfa, sugar beets, carrots, and barley. Organic items (e.g. seeds) were placed in sealed glass vials.
  Pendray supervised the items in the capsule that were selected to chronicle 20th-century life in the United States. During packaging of the contents, under the direction of representatives of the United States National Bureau of Standards, each object was examined to determine whether it could be expected to last 5,000 years. Pendray was sent a letter by anthropologist Clark David Wissler that he felt most things were well represented in a draft list of the items going into the time capsule, except perhaps that of a sewing machine and noteworthy ceremonies (i.e. religious, weddings). Rose Arnold Powell, best remembered to get Susan B. Anthony represented on Mount Rushmore, sent Pendray a telegraph requesting that he get an input from women's suffrage activist Carrie Chapman Catt. He added then the only pencil handwritten page in the capsule that listed items in it that were represented by 20th century women, such as culinary preparation tracts and women's exploits noted in World Almanacs and film. Care was taken to select items that are not interactive and do not decompose into harmful gases or acids. 
  Five categories of objects were placed inside Time Capsule I.
  Small articles of common use
  Textiles and materials
  Essay in microfilm
  RKO newsreel
  Miscellaneous items
caption: Guest book pin
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