Reflecting on History and Future Objects

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And listeners of this show will get a seventy-five dollar sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves and indeed dot com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Do it the right way with Indeed . It's nineteen seventy six. The average annual salary in the U.S. is just over $9,000 . There is no internet to entertain us, but Jaws is back in theaters, and afternoon delight is burning up the charts. Nixon has resigned in disgrace. So now Ford is president. The Vietnam War has finally come to a close. And now an ambivalent country is about to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the signing of the In the marbled beautiful statuary hall, there's a big iron safe . Like picture uh like a western where they're robbing a train and there's a safe on one of the cars of the railroad train, and it's this big iron monstrous thing, but it's sort of portable. That kind of a safe, like a 19th-century safe. This is historian Joe Lepore. The safe, which is known as the Century Safe, sometimes called the Centennial Safe, was specially built on the occasion a hundred years before, not of the bicentennial, but of the centennial, the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the declaration The Century Safe was created in 1876 to mark the country's 100th birthday. The idea was to make a time capsule to fill the safe with objects, things hand selected to represent the moment they came from. Those meaningful objects were hidden away inside the safe and the doors were sealed, and written on the doors were instructions to the future . It is inscribed upon it the promise that it will be opened by the President of the United States in the crazy futuristic year of 1976. Good morning to all of you. Happy birthday to the USA . We are very pleased to have you assembled here this morning on a very historic occasion. And President Ford has been coerced by his a ides to carve out a few minutes in his schedule to traipse from the White House over to the Capitol building into Statu ary Hall, where a fleet of photographers is assembled, a waiting this century -l ong wait finally coming to an end with the opening of an iron and glass When the safe was first sealed, there was a record of what had been put inside. But by nineteen seventy six, after its hundred year journey through time, most people had no idea. And so now they were gathered around with one shared question. What was in there ? What objects did those Americans from the past think would really say , this is who we are. These are the things that represent us and our values. I mean, what a daunting task, what a fraught exercise. What objects could anyone possibly pick to tell the story of the country of our country? What fool would even attempt such a thing ? From 99% invisible and BBC Studios. This is a history of the United States in 100 objects. I'm Roman Mars. Okay, so let's go back 100 years before 1976 when the safe was first being filled, which to my understanding was at the World's Fair of 187 6. So could you talk about that World's Fair? Yeah. So a World's Fair, we don't really have them anymore. It's a little bit even hard to describe, but it's a little bit like a circus plus Epcot Center plus Disney World plus the UN It had arts and science exhibits from across the globe 30,000 exhibits in more than 200 buildings. You could climb a ladder onto the right arm Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated what turned out to be his prototype of the telephone. Heinz Ketchup was introduced to the public. It is hard to consider The big hit of the centennial exposition was machinery Hall, where there was this giant power engine. There were also typewriters and sewing machines, just like a lot of gadgetry that was fun to see. Personally, pulled the lever of that engine that brought all the other exhibits in the hall to life. The technology had advanced so far that for most attendees, it must have seemed like magic . The fair was, in many ways, the centerpiece of the nation's first big birthday. Aaron Ross Powell So could you give a sense of what the general mood of eighteen seventy six is? Are are people really feeling like celebrating the United States. Like what is going on? It is a big commercial hullabaloo to get people to celebrate the United States in 187 6 . Recall, we're only 11 years from the end of the Civil War, in which three-quarters of a million Americans died, we are at the turning point in which Reconstruction, the plan for a fully multiracial democracy in the United States for the first time is just about to be abandoned. And there is a great spirit of reform in the United States still, especially under the banner of the women's suffrage movement. So there's a lot of political tumult in these years, but there is a tremendous amount that Americans who have an appetite for celebration are very keen to celebrate in maybe surprisingly less about American freedom and liberty and democracy and more about American economic and industrial might and geographic expansion. One in five Americans came to the eighteen seventy six Worlds Fair to see all of that innovation for themselves. In fact, progress had accelerated so much, life was changing so fast that for the first time, Americans were becoming fascinated with the future. You would say now, okay, for all of human time, haven't humans always been interested in the future? And I would say no. That is where like people like we just live in like, what is the future of work? What is the future of automation? What is the future of AI? What is the future of democracy? Like all of our political debates are about the future. It is like a kind of like Davos Aspen pipeline of like we must talk about the future at all time. Nobody thought about the future until the 20th century. So but there is kind of the beginning of a notion of histor ical time that is novel in the 19th century. And people can picture rockets and going to the moon and they're not called robots until the nineteen twenties, but you can kind of there's a lot about mechanical men. So people begin for the first time really thinking like if machines keep getting better and faster and bigger and stronger, what will the future look like? And it's in this moment of celebrating the past and thinking about the future that one woman, Anna Deem, a magazine publisher, dreams up the Century Safe. She was a Civil War widow and you know was a canny businesswoman and here was a stunt to get some attention for and sell subscriptions to the magazine in the newspaper. So she commissioned the building of this elaborate safe, which is kind of cool. It has like engraving all over it and then it promises on it that it's going to be opened by the president of the United States in 1976 on July 4th, which is just cool. It would be would have been like looking at a rocket ship. So she gets space at the World's Fair to set this thing up and then people interact with it like how do they what is what is on display well the thing itself um but then you could you could look at what was already in there and you could pay money to have yourself put in. You could pay to have to to sign your autograph in an autograph book of just anybody. And these chumps did that . It was a clever ruse . Gimme a kid you got a nickel? So she made a little pretty penny . So like if if the idea of time capsules is quite new and the idea of like thinking about the past is kind of is is actually a new concept, thinking about the future is kind of a new concept, how does she convince people to care about this enough to get floor space on the I think she was a great show business woman. And it did speak to the moment in the sense of it was a clever idea, right? Here we are, one hundred years from the Declaration of Independence . Why don't we think about where the country will be a hundred years from now? After the fair, having done everything she could to drum up excitement, Anna sealed her safe full of objects and entrusted it to Congress. Aaron Powell Then it goes down, you know, into the Raiders of the Lost Ark storage facility. So like it really over the course of this hundred years, despite the ornate uh b bigness of the safe itself, it really does get kind of forgotten. Yeah, it's meant to be forgotten for a century. Like what are you gonna do? Check on it? Like what is the what's the point of seeing what of So the safe sat in the nation's capital as the country changed around it . It sat there as debates about segregation grew from reconstruction. As the Washington monument went up, and eventually Lincoln's, as men in uniform filled the streets on the way to World War I, then World War II, it sat not bothering anyone through the Great Depression and Wounded Knee and the Titanic and the creation of television and the Korean War and the March on Washington and the Stonewall riots and men walking on the moon . Time went on and on and the country changed and changed, and suddenly it was the nineteen seventies . Yeah, so a newspaper article appears I think in nineteen seventy-one. There's a lot of newspaper coverage of the bicenten nial. And there's a story about, hey, aren't we supposed to be opening up this centennial safe? 'Cause some clever reporter got the idea to go back and see what happened at the centennial. And then they go to the Smithsonian this one and say, Yeah, I we I think we still have The New York Times runs an article, quote Smithsonian can't find keys to centennial safe. That's right. In the intervening decades, they had lost the key. And then a man in Florida sees the article and realiz es he has it. Because Anna Deem didn't have any children, so what happened to the key? And she didn't somehow for some reason she didn't the Smithsonian. She gave it to her like great niece Edith or something. And and this guy in Florida was Edith's I don't know. Great . Great aunt Emma. Is that so right? Edith Gertrude. We could just make up a name that belonged to that Edwardian era Roman and we would be covered. It was the guy's great aunt Emma who had gratefully passed on the key. So the safe could now be opened. Get it out? Are they gonna bring it to the Capitol? Then they manage to find it in storage. They bring it to the Capitol. In January of of nineteen seventy-six, they they have gotten the key from that guy, but maybe it's rusted. They have to hire a locksmith to jimmy the thing. Okay, so we have at least some of the parts here all coming together in in nineteen seventy six. And again, I c I kind of was hoping if you could sort of characterize, you know, the national mood at this moment as opposed to eighteen seventy six. I mean this this is the bicentennial. Again, it's really tumultuous time. Watergate has happened, like a real change in the sense of what people feel about their government. What what is the temperature around the country and and uh how is the bicentennial unfolding? Yeah, so uh barely out of the Vietnam War, Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Nixon's resigned in seventy-four, Ford very controversially pardons him. And for Ford, really throwing himself into the hoopla of the bicentennial is about healing the country from those divisions and those wounds . And he comes to really believe that that is his main task as president. It was also controversial, because, you know, the country's vision of itself was not a unitary vision any more than it was at any other point in American history. But you know, there Jesse Jackson called for a boycott of the bicentennial. Gil Scott Heron wrote this great piece called Bicentennial Blues . Um there, was a lot of kind of like Frederick Douglass vibe, resistance to the bicentennial. There were a lot of protests by native nations, really effective protests. Um, but there were also a lot of powwowhouse, like a lot of public celebrations of native culture and native politics. So it kind of had it all, the bicentennial. It is with high honor and deep personal pleasure that I introduce the President of the United States. And so like in an effort to grab onto something that we can all rally behind. Well let's get to this opening ceremony where Ford is in his three-piece suit. Obviously, I'm deeply honor ed to have the opportunity to open this histor ic centennial space. Ford stands in front of a packed room, cameras flashing, reading his speech from index cards. It contains many items of interest to us today as we celebrate the completion of our second century. And I think it's actually quite a special sp I think it's a nice speech, right? It's it I don't know, I guess if you don't like Ford, you're not gonna I mean I I kind of like Ford. He just says he just kinda runs with the metaphor, right? As we look inside this safe , let us look inside ourselves. What does the safe contain? It contains our hopes and aspirations as a people . And nothing is more precious than that. America's wealth is not in material objects, but in our great heritage, our freedom , and our belief in ourselves. Let us look into our hearts. Let us look into our hearts and into our hearts. Thank you very much. And now let's open the doors . 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So we're finally at this moment where the safe is going to be opened and we're going to find out what's inside. So uh Ford finishes his nice little speech. And can you tell us what happens as they start pulling out some of the items? Yeah. So he pulls things out one by one and sort of looks at them. Here is a uh and tries to like identify them. That's a tip uh Tiffany ink stand, I understand. Like okay, this is an ink stand. It looks a little different than the ones we have, Kyle. There's a room of photographers and reporters who are awaiting you know, message in a bottle, confessions of Jefferson Davis, an unpublished memoir that explains the abandonment of Reconstruction. Like I like all the things that I want to see. This is a uh photograph of an early statesman. I don't see his name. But I mean really it's a dud. Lindy I have a picture of a chair person . I don't have any indication of her name, but looks mighty pretty like it's just they're just nothing it's just like nothing after nothing. And so he pulls out more things and people just start laughing. I guess the other picture was uh Mr. M. F. Cooper, electoral commissioner . They always seem to get their picture in there someplace . You have very high expectations for like what could you want to have seen from 187 6 and nothing in there is anything that you would ever have wanted anybody to keep on any occasion . In the end, the safe turned out to have a lot of photographs. Abraham Lincoln was there, Ulysses S. Grant. There was one of all the members of the forty fourth Congress, the one seated in eighteen seventy-six, and one of Anna Dean herself. And then there's the temperance pamphlet. There is this ink stand that supposedly was Henry Wads h' Longfellows. There was a book with the names of the 80,000 people working for the government in 1876. There was a picture of Anna Deem's family physician. He must have been a fantastic doctor. And a book of autographs from legislators, clergymen, poets, scientists, and anyone who paid to sign it. Like forgotten nobodies they might have well have been called. Like everyone's just like , oh . Okay. Yeah. What are we doing tomorrow? I hate to make this announcement, but the bells have rung in the house for a vote for all the house members. It's just like it's some non-event. So why do you think these objects were so disappointing? Um I think they don't cross the valley of time with their significance intact. So what was signific ant to the people who put them in there was the novelty of photography , the The possibility of preservation . I mean, it is kind of new to be keeping something preserved. Yeah. Right. And this would have been a very well-preserved set of materials because they're sealed in a glass box Um you know, um embalming was really new in the civil war because you know, your son or your brother, your father died far from home and people could pay to have the body and bond so that it could be sent by railroad to go home and you could still it would still be something you could view before buri al. Yeah. And that form of preservation, preserving the human body long enough for a railroad journey to get home and be seen by loved ones, was a hugely significant thing. Like photography where you could still see someone who had died. Yeah. And the Century Safe is like has that sense of embalming a moment in time . But it's it's more fascinated with the very act of preservation than it is with carefully thinking about what's worth preserving. Yeah. It's almost like a monument to the possibility that we could preserve something where like as a it like what to put in there was an afterthought. Yeah. So what would have been interesting? What could she put in there that you as a historian and and you particularly as an like an archive nut, as a the type of historian who likes old uh dusty things to to pull out, like w what what would you have liked to have seen? Oh, something totally sneaky. First of all , nothing published. Nothing that is not handwritten or hand drawn, like the m th something that is one of a kind that exists nowhere else, that can be found nowhere else that would be a revelation upon its discovery. So um Love Letters of Ulysses S. Grant. I don't know. You know, like um I don't really care about Ulysses S. Grant, but the diary of a Chinese railroad worker who was learning English or something. I like I don't like something that we don't have. Yeah. Or and that we were not that was not going to survive otherwise. I very much take Jill's point here. I can't imagine how disappointing everything and the safe must have felt after one hundred years of buildup. But I will say, even those objects that seem like they are absolutely worthless when you spend a little bit of time with them, they do take you somewhere. Like the temperance pamphlet. Of course, a handwritten original item would be more profound, but this mass printed pamphlet represents one of the biggest social movements at the time. One that would ultimately amend the Constitution, not once , but twice . This fight over alcohol that is so far in the past for us was front of mind for them . Or that photograph of the forty fourth Congress. It features eight black members, more than ever before. But it was also the last time we would have so many black representatives for almost 100 years. Were they thinking at this moment in 1876 that this progress would continue? Or could they feel the failure of reconstruction on the horizon? Even that thoroughly un remarkable inkwell that Ford pulled from the safe, it belonged to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the celebrated poet and author of Paul Revere's ride. He's the reason every American knows the redcoats are coming. The version of the Revolutionary War most people carry around in their heads came from his pen . But when the safe was filled, he was still deep in mourning from the death of his wife . She was at home with him when her dress caught fire, and when Longfellow tried to smother the flames, he suffered severe burns to his face. From then on he wore a long beard to hide his scars. He was never the same. One writer said his poems about mourning effectively turned him into the nation's grief counselor . And the only reason I know all this is because that inkwell was in the century safe . So I understand the disappointment of Joe Lapore and President Ford and the entire population of the United States in 1976. But I do think that in all these objects, in any American object, you can find America. The reason why I want to talk to you about this about this Century Safe is because we're embarking on this series called A History of the U.S. in 100 Objects. And um , and so we're kind of picking things out. You know, it's representing the United States. And I was just wondering: like, should we even be trying to do this? Like, what do you have some ad vice? I don't know, why not? Um I I say go I say I'm glad you're doing it. You will have fun. Um I think that um I think it is important to recognize that much like the present, the past is largely a chronicle of misery. I mean people suffer. Yeah. And the people who suffer the most leave the least evidence behind. And so any history that begins with what survives has a real challenge to arriving at any proper perspective on the human condition. I think that that is the asymmetry of the historical record, right? The people who were wealthiest and most literate and had the greatest resources not only left not only made a lot of records, um, they managed to have their records preserved and everyone else