AffordableTimeCapsule.com

Now that you have your new capsule, its been filled, and sealed.  You aren't done yet.

How will you keep track of its location?
With the help of our friends at..

The International Time Capsule Society
The International Time Capsule Society (ITCS) is an organization established in 1990 to promote the careful study of time capsules. It strives to document all types of time capsules throughout the world. The group is headquartered at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia.
 

Register Your Time Capsule Today

     The International Time Capsule Society

The ITCS database will serve to remind future generations of existing capsules so they are not forgotten or lost. Many correspondents from the United States, Canada and Europe already have written to ITCS, with information on their time capsule projects. If your organization wishes to register its time capsule, you are encouraged to contact ITCS.

Annual ITCS conferences are scheduled to be held at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. ITCS members and guests from around the world meet to discuss time capsule projects and to pool their knowledge.

The inaugural meeting of ITCS was held at Oglethorpe University in the spring of 1990, on the 50th anniversary of the sealing of the Crypt of Civilization. The first ITCS meeting drew the attention of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune London Daily Mail, ABC, CNN, the Associated Press, National Public Radio and many other media.

The Mission of ITCS

 the ITCS seeks:

Why Locate the ITCS at Oglethorpe University?

Oglethorpe University is an appropriate location for the study of time capsules. It is the site of the famed Crypt of Civilization. The Guiness Book of World Records (1990) identifies the Crypt as "the first successful attempt to bury a record of this culture for any future inhabitants ...."

The Crypt was first proposed by Oglethorpe's president, Thornwell Jacobs, the "father of the modern time capsule," in an article in the November 1936 issue of Scientific American. The Crypt was sealed on May 28,1940, and it is not to be opened until May 28, 8113 A.D. Dr. Jacobs calculated this date from the first fixed date in history, 4241 B.C. when most historians believe the Egyptian calendar was established. Exactly 6177 years had passed between 4241 B.C. and 1936 A.D. Jacobs projected the same period of time forward from 1936, arriving at the year 8113 A.D. for the Crypt's opening.

The encyclopedic inventory of items in the Crypt includes, in a swimming pool size chamber, over 640,000 pages of micro-filmed material, hundreds of newsreels and recordings, a set of Lincoln logs, a Donald Duck doll and thousands of other items, many from ordinary daily life. There also is a device designed to teach the English language to the Crypt's finders.

Jacob's idea in 1936 created tremendous interest. Soon afterward the Westinghouse Company, which was building a pavilion for the 1938-39 New York World's Fair, buried a project, which was not to be opened until 6938 A.D. It was called a "Time Capsule" and our language gained a new term almost overnight.