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The expression time capsule designates a container used to store for posterity a selection of objects thought to be representative of a particular moment in time.
This expression is also used figuratively—as, for example, in the following from A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake 1 (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1947), by the U.S. authors Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) and Henry Morton Robinson (1898-1961) [page 8]:
The Wake, at its lowest estimate, is a huge time-capsule, a complete and permanent record of our age. If our society should go to smash tomorrow (which, as Joyce implies, it may) one could find all the pieces, together with the forces that broke them, in Finnegans Wake.
1 The reference is to Finnegans Wake (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1939), by the Irish author James Joyce (1882-1941).
The text containing the earliest occurrence of time capsule that I have found indicates that this expression was coined in 1938 to specifically designate the container built by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
The text in question is the following Associated-Press story, published in many U.S. and Canadian newspapers on Friday 19th August 1938—for example in the Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia, USA) [page 1, column 7]:
NEW YORK, Aug. 18.—(AP)—A streamlined “tomb” for the machine age was being built by science today to let people 5,000 years from now know what they were like.
It will be filled with the things that make us what we are—including a typical woman’s hat.
To balance the hat, there will be serious things relating to government and industry, religion and philosophy, history and geography, music and art.
So that archeologists who dig up the “tomb” will not just look at the hat, laugh and dismiss us as a peculiar race, the Smithsonian institution hopes to place in the machine age sarcophagus a “key to English” which will make it easy for persons unfamiliar with English to understand our language.
The whole thing will be buried somewhere in the World’s fair ground this fall.
The “tomb,” being built in the laboratories of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing company, is a cross between old King Tut’s last resting place and something you would expect to find on Mars. It is called a “time capsule.”
Like King Tut’s tomb, the “capsule” will have an inner crypt and an outer chamber, and will look roughly like a shell from a Big Bertha. It will be seven feet, two inches long and eight inches in diameter.
Since the “capsule” is expected to last 5,000 years, the outer shell is being constructed of a new metallic alloy, made principally of copper mixed with small amounts of chromium and silver. It is as hard as steel, yet resists corrosion as well as pure copper. Instead of rusting upon contact with iron in the earth, it should strengthen itself. It will be made in six segments, and sealed watertight.
The inner crypt will be six inches in diameter and slightly more than six feet long. In it will be an envelope of heat-resistant glass imbedded in a waterproof substance. When the relics of this age of ours have been placed inside it, all the air will be removed from it and the glass envelope will then be filled with nitrogen or some other inert gas to act as a preservative.
To make sure the people 5,000 years from now find the “tomb,” the scientists are writing a book about it and distributing it to museums and libraries all over the world. If all the books are destroyed by then, we’ll probably be forgotten, swing music, the numbers racket, armaments races and all.
The expression time capsule was immediately applied to other objects than the container built by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company—but originally with reference to that specific container:
1-: The expression time capsule was applied to a hypothetical container to be buried at Rushmore 2, in the following editorial, published in The Daily Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA) of Saturday 20th August 1938 [page 6, column 2]:
“TIME CAPSULE” FOR RUSHMORE?
A “time capsule” is to be buried next year at the site of the New York World fair.
[…]
In this connection we might mention also that at Rushmore we of today are building a memorial for the ages. Sculptor Borglum estimates that the figures he is carving on the granite face of the mountain will be in existence 500,000 years from now. This memorial, naturally, will withstand many of the disasters that might sweep civilization. It will not be affected by disease and it is not likely to be damaged by war. Floods may sweep the land but, receding, leave the memorial intact.
The thought comes to us that it might be well to bury in Rushmore a capsule similar to that to be placed in the fair grounds at New York. There may be nothing in New York to attract attention 5,000 years from now but the Rushmore memorial is likely to stand for ages and will surely attract attention.
2 Mount Rushmore, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, is a national memorial, with the faces of Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Roosevelt carved into its side by the U.S. sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941) from 1927 to 1941.
2-: The expression time capsule was used in the title of the following letter to the Editor, by one Doane Robinson, published in The Daily Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA) of Tuesday 23rd August 1938 [page 6, column 3]—the ““Capsule” editorial” is the above-quoted text published in The Daily Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA) of Saturday 20th August 1938:
ANOTHER “TIME CAPSULE”
To the Editor of The Argus-Leader:I have read with interest your “Capsule” editorial, which reminds me that when Custer 3 and his staff visited Harney peak, in August, 1874, they wrote a list of those present and other interesting information and slipped it into a cartridge and sealed it securely and then poked the capsule into a crevice in the rock. I have no record of its having been found.
3 The reference is to the U.S. military officer George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876).
The earliest occurrence that I have found of the expression time capsule used without reference to the container built by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company is from The Columbian (Vancouver, Washington, USA) of Monday 5th September 1938 [page 1, column 4]:
State and county WPA 4 leaders […] turned out Sunday to dedicate the new $100,000 Lewisville recreation park on the east fork of the Lewis river […].
[…]
As a feature of the dedication, WPA officials furnished a “time capsule” to be built into the stone portals now under construction at the park. The capsule, a metal tube, contains data pertaining to the creation of the park and its improvement by the WPA.
4 WPA stands for Works Progress Administration, a New-Deal agency that employed jobseekers to carry out public works projects.
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