Page:Book of record of the time capsule of cupaloy (New York World's fair, 1939).djvu/14

 that we might leave records of our own day for five thousand years hence; to a day when the peoples of the world will think of us standing at history's midpoint.

Whether we shall be able to transmit such a segment of our time into the future depends not only on our ingenuity at selection and preservation, on the excellence of engineering, metallurgy, chemistry, and other intellectual disciplines, but also in large measure on those who come after us, and their willingness to cooperate in such an archaeological venture across the reaches of time.

We pray you therefore, whoever reads this book, to cherish and preserve it through the ages, and translate it from time to time into new languages that may arise after us, in order that knowledge of the Time Capsule of Cupaloy may be handed down to those for whom it is intended. We likewise ask: let the Time Capsule rest in the earth until its time shall come; let none dig it up for curiosity or for any other reason. It is a message from one age to another, and none should touch it in the years that lie between.

HOW long the Time Capsule will remain in the earth, or what experiences await it, we have no way of knowing. But if, as is our hope, it rests untroubled until the year A.D. 6939, there may be people capable of discovering and raising it, of reading and studying the contents.

We imagine they will be able to reconstruct, through archaeological techniques like those developed in our own time, the hard structures of our culture: our architecture, our dams and roads, our houses, and our general