Message to the Future

AMAZING STORIES is proud to inform its readers that a copy of the October, 1938 issue, reduced to microfilm, has been selected by a committee of scientists, for inclusion in the Westinghouse Time Capsule, prepared as a message to the people of 5,000 years from now in an effort to preserve for them a tangible and comprehensive record and cross-section of our present-day civilization.
It is interesting to note that only five of the so-called "pulp" magazines and twenty of the "slicks" were included by this committee. Therefore AMAZING STORIES feels quite honored to know that it is one of the representative five, best suited to convey a cross-section of what we of today like to read.
A complete description of this unique message to the future follows:

     Exactly at high noon (standard time) on September 23, 19.38, the moment of the Autumnal Equinox, the Westinghouse Time Capsule, carrying a compressed storehouse of information about todays civilization, began its 5,000-year journey into the future at the New York Worlds Fair Grounds.
     With the declaration: May this Time Capsule sleep well when it is awakened 5,000 years from now may its contents be found a suitable gift to our far-off descendants." A. W. Robertson, Chairman of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, gave the signal to lower the burnished Cupaloy Capsule fifty feet into the ground at the site of the Westinghouse building, a model of which was afterward unveiled.
     To the solemn booming of a giant bell, the Capsule disappeared slowly into the earth. Workmen screwed down and sealed the cap, symbolically dispatching, for delivery in 5,000 years, the heaviest "letter" ever "mailed."
     During the World's Fair the Capsule may be on view through a periscope, and inside the Westinghouse Building will be a replica, together with duplicates of all the objects, books, fabrics, alloys, toys, newsreels and other items it contains.
     When the Fair is over pitch and concrete will be poured down the Well; the retaining pipe will be removed, and the Capsule will be left for discovery by archaeologists of the future.
     Libraries, museums and other carefully chosen repositories all over the world, have received copies of the Book of Record of The Time Capsule, containing information that will guide future historians back to the spot when the proper time has arrived. The Capsules contents, selected with the aid of some of the countrys foremost archeologists, historians, scientists, editors and librarians, are such as to provide a complete story of modern times, including a Key to English which will enable people of the future to translate and pronounce todays language, and read what has been left for them in the Time Capsule.
     In an address by A. W. Robertson on the Occasion of the Depositing of the Capsule, he said:

     "We have gathered here to deposit a record of our time for the information of posterity 5,000 years hence. Five thousand years was selected as the period in which this Time Capsule should rest unmolested and unopened, with the thought that we would project our thinking into the future as many years as we have any historical record of man. Five thousand years ago, approximately, recorded history began. So we stand here today at the Autumnal Equinox, at the moment when the sun is crossing the Equator in September, 1938, and look back five thousand years for a brief moment before we turn our faces to the future.
     "Five thousand years ago the sun crossed the Equator at approximately the same moment in the same month. Five thousand years from now, in all probability, the Autumnal Equinox will occur at the same moment, The earth and the heavens will have changed little in ten thousand years. Our forefathers looked up at the same sky that our far-off descendants will see. But this will be the only thing that will remain the same. Everything else will be changed.
     "Five thousand years ago people quite similar to us lived and died, loved and hated, planned great works and had great activity, and realized then, as we do now, that they were mortal, and struggled to create something that would be immortal. They built temples of stone, made mausoleums, tombs and pyramids that were intended to last forever, but few of them survived. Only tiny fragments of the civilizations of which they were a part are known.
     "Our civilization may go the same way in five thousand years unless such projects as that represented by the Time Capsule are successful. The modest sum spent on the Capsule and its contents, placed at compound interest for 5,000 years, would amount to a fabulous sum, but the contents may be held to be even more valuable if the Capsule is preserved intact until that time.
     "For these treasures may be the only evidence left on earth of our kind of living. Five thousand years of time may well destroy everything we have done, and we, the people of this day, will be nothing but dim shadows, dimly seen far back on the stage of life.
     "When the contents of the Capsule are made known to our far-off posterity we will move up for a brief time to the front of the stage. They will know how we lived and worked and dressed, what we read, what we worked with, what we valued and some of the things we did for amusement. We may imagine, when the Time Capsule is opened, that the all-seeing eye of television will make its contents visible to countless millions who will participate in the ceremony in their far-off homes. We may wish to speculate on what manner of people they will be, and on what will remain of our customs and institutions.
     "Probably the persons who open the Capsule will have a physical appearance very like our own, except that they should have learned the principle of breeding a better race. These men and women should be as healthy as the healthiest, sturdy as the sturdiest, as beautiful as our most beautiful, and as intelligent as the best of us today. They should be, and probably will be, a race of supermen and superwomen, as judged by our standards; but only common men and women as judged by their standards. The need of perpetuating a better race may perhaps be bred in the younger people of that day, even as our forefathers taught us religion.
     "For centuries, if some contemporary estimates are correct, the northern hemisphere will become warmer and the summers more tropical, so that civilization will have pushed far north. Undesirable sections will not be occupied, but will be allowed to become natural game reservations and great national parks.
     "Public sports and pageants of tremendous scope and significance will very likely be popular. Every community will have its theater and all will take part from time to time. Local orchestras and great choruses will be common. This will be a healthy world governed by wholesome people; The abnormal will have no place in it. Good health will be the rule, and the vigor of the people will make an active life the only happy life.
     "What we do here today is precedent. The present civilization has an obligation to itself to make its contribution to the future as eternal as possible. No longer should we trust to mere accident to perpetuate the record but with forethought and sound judgment bury in the earth imperishable records of our time."
     The casting and precision machining of the seven foot "Time Capsule" was done by expert craftsmen at the companys East Pittsburgh Works. The 800-pound Cupaloy metal envelope is intended to preserve for scientists of 6939 A.D. a tangible record of life in our time and a secret of hardened copper.
     While this metallic message to the ages will 'preserve a cross-section of our modern achievements in science and art, as represented by news reels and books reproduced in microfilm and selected products from laboratories, factories and cities, it will also contain the formula for Cupaloy, the copper alloy of which the capsule is made.
     Literally the capsule symbolizes the key to the "Philosophers Stone" for which the ancient alchemists had searched in vain since the days of the Pharaoh', striving to transmute one metal into another. Utilizing modern sciences discovery of the secret of space lattices of the crystals of invisible atoms that make up the 92 known elements of the earth, Westinghouse metallurgists carried to success a five-year research to make copper as hard as steel. The result was Cupaloy, a 'heat-treatable alloy composed of copper, chromium and silver.
      The investigators discovered that a small amount of silver added to copper and chromium helped to strengthen the basic metal. They forced the chromium atoms to group themselves to form billions of crystallites distributed quite uniformly through the mass of mixed metals. The peculiar arrangement of the chromium atoms made the metallic mass hard. The relatively few silver atoms acted as stabilizers of the alloy after it had been temper-hardened, increasing its resistance to the softening effects of long exposure to high temperatures.
     Already this alloy is at work in industry as welding electrodes, welding tips and in other tasks where high electrical conductivity and heat resistance are essential qualities. Research engineers selected it for the 5,000 years' Marathon against time as the most practicable means of delivering intact a visual record of the present day.
     But will this metal resist the corrosion effect of sea water seeping through the foundation soil of New York City during the next five millennia? Engineers think that it will.
     Copper is quite resistant to the attack of sea water seepage from the ocean. It is particularly so when the situation is such that the products of initial corrosion can accumulate and protect the underlying metal. Cupaloy may be expected to behave equally well in view of laboratory corrosion tests made some time ago. In fact it appears possible that the presence of the chromium in the alloy will act to increase the protective value of the "patina" of film which would be expected to form under the influence of undisturbed soil corrosion. Confidence in Cupaloy's ability to withstand the attacks of time is strengthened by the fact that many copper alloy implements have come down to us from antiquity.
     In electrolytic reactions with corrosion salts such as iron salts in the soil, copper becomes the anode or positive electrode, and therefore receives deposits instead of being eaten away.
     The Time Capsule was cast in seven sections and after machining, all segments except the last were screwed together and sealed with an asphalt compound. The joints were then peened out and burnished, forming a solid unbroken outside shell of Cupaloy, shaped like a torpedo seven feet six inches long and eight inches in diameter.
     If the metallurgists of 6939 want to make a Time Capsule to guard their own legacy to the year 11939 A.D., this, roughly, is the recipe they will follow:
     Melt the copper then deoxidize it with boron. Add hardening briquettes of copper-chromium, mix in a "pinch" of silver and stir well while the metal heats in a crucible furnace at 2500 degrees Fahrenheit. Then cast in a mold and machine.
     The Time Capsule contains a six-foot inner crypt of heat-resistant glass from which the air has been evacuated and replaced by an inert gas to act as a preservative.
     The sealed glass tube is wrapped with glass tape and embedded in a waterproof compound. The Cupaloy sections are shrunk-fit on tapering threads, producing a water-tight joint.