The 1940 Time Capsule Meant to Wait Until 8113

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In 1940, a remarkable time capsule was sealed beneath a building at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, designed to preserve a broad snapshot of human civilization for thousands of years. It is scheduled to remain sealed until May 28, 8113, a date chosen by projecting a historical span of roughly 6,000 years into the future. The chamber was built as a permanent underground archive, with a large collection of written material, recordings, photographs, films and ordinary objects from the era. More than 640,000 pages were preserved on microfilm, along with other cultural and technological material intended to help future people understand twentieth-century life. The designers even included equipment intended to help future discoverers understand English and a small wind-powered generator so some of the stored technology could potentially be used if conventional electricity were unavailable. The collection mixes serious historical records with ordinary popular culture, making it less like a single monument and more like a snapshot of everyday civilization. The capsule was sealed while the Second World War was beginning, which also means its creators could not know what the following decades would bring. The university still maintains the sealed chamber, which remains closed until the designated date.