July 30, 2014

Recently, the Archives was alerted to the discovery of a time capsule placed underneath Disque Hall at its dedication 47 years ago. Unfortunately, the capsule was discovered inadvertently during the construction of the new Perelman Plaza and was crushed. Water soaked the contents of the capsule, which included copies of the Triangle, the Bulletin (course catalog) and the Drexel Technical Journal, pictured below. Fortunately, copies of these items were already preserved in the University Archives. In fact, you can read the June 2, 1967 issue of the Triangle that was in the time capsule in the Libraries' digitized Triangle collection.

The capsule also contained President Hagerty's remarks at the dedication ceremony on May 26, 1967 - a copy of which also exists in the Archives. See the two versions side by side below -- the copy on the left was stored in the time capsule, while the copy on the right has been kept in secure, climate-controlled storage. The lesson is that depositing your important documents, photographs and objects in the University Archives is a much safer way to preserve them than burying them in a metal box in the ground.