3. Time Capsule in Flushing Meadows Park

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On September 23, 1939, an 800-pound tube made of an alloy of copper and chromium called Cupaloy was lowered 50 feet into the ground at the site of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company exhibit of the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. The tube’s contents comprised 35 items one might find in any run-of-the-mill Smith family household, including copies of Life magazine, a Sears Roebuck catalog, cigarettes and seeds of wheat, corn, alfalfa and soy, each examined and preserved in inert argon and nitrogen gas to remain intact for the next five thousand years–until the year 6939 to be exact.

The device was an engineering feat, a “time capsule” as notable New York public relations counselor George Edward Pendray called it for the very first time in 1939.

The burying of the first Westinghouse Time Capsule in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was one of the last and most widely publicized events of the two-year 1939-40 World’s Fair. The capsule itself was accompanied by a record of its contents that also included extensive instructions detailing its recovery accounting for changing geography, political boundaries and even the loss of modern timekeeping (look to the stars, the book advises). This record was then distributed in the thousands to museums and libraries across the world in the event that any one copy, even the original, might be lost. A second time capsule was buried for the 1964 World’s Fair, also for 5000 years.

Read more about the World’s Fair time capsule here.