Image: Tom/Flickr
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In any case, preserving the present in this way is a relatively modern invention. Although the word wasn't coined until 1939, the first proper time capsule was the 1900 Detroit "Century Box," a kind of hope chest filled with photographs and letters from 56 distinguished citizens of the Motor City, describing their daily lives and making predictions for the future. The Century Box was opened in the year 2000, in a ceremony presided over by Detroit's then-mayor, Dennis Archer.Despite their altruistic goals, time capsules are usually publicity stunts, as much celebrations of the present as they are gifts to future generations. Throughout modern history, they've popped up at celebrations like the World's Fair, in the laying of cornerstones for large building projects, or as grand gestures from city officials and corporations like Westinghouse, who buried two high-tech capsules 50 feet below Flushing Meadows Park in 1939 and 1965:It takes a special, lonely kind of madness to consider, and plan for, a future thousands of years beyond the boundaries of our own graves.
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Image: Wikimedia Commons
The Westinghouse capstone. Image: Wikimedia Commons
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