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Mausoleums of Civilization: Techno-Corporate Appropriations of the Time Vessel, 1925–1940
Book chapter

Mausoleums of Civilization: Techno-Corporate Appropriations of the Time Vessel, 1925–1940

Nick Yablon
Remembrance of Things Present
University of Chicago Press
06/12/2019
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574271.003.0007

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Abstract

This chapter traces how Westinghouse Electric Corporation appropriated the civic custom of the time capsule as a public relations strategy to bolster public faith in science, technology, and technocracy in Depression-era America. Although its Time Capsule, sealed at the New York World’s Fair in 1940, is often celebrated as prototype, this chapter traces the technocratic agenda back to three earlier projects, each targeting distant millennia: an agrarian populist’s “Pyramid” which began construction in Arkansas in 1925; an anthropologist and pastor’s “Records for Future Ages,” deposited in two Denver mausoleums in the early 1930s; and Oglethorpe University’s “Crypt of Civilization,” assembled in an Atlanta suburb in the late 1930s. Insofar as they expressed fear of civilization’s imminent collapse, these three projects diverged from Westinghouse’s. Yet, they anticipated it in their conviction that scientific experts could ultimately rescue society (in particular, by applying eugenicist racial principles); their unequivocal devotion to technology, including new media; their depersonalized conception of posterity; and their nationalist claim to represent American “civilization” in microcosm, which resulted in the elision of marginalized struggles and voices. Drawing on critiques in contemporaneous science fiction and proposals for more meaningful repositories, the chapter exposes the limits of such microcosmic, long-range projects.
 science and technology Technocracy civilization science fiction Social and Cultural History future New York World's Fair eugenics Westinghouse Electric public relations Great Depression

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