Boydell & Brewer
Camden House
Chapter Title: Collecting: Defining the Subject
Chapter Author(s): Johannes Endres
Book Title: Collecting in the Twenty-First Century
Book Subtitle: From Museums to the Web
Book Editor(s): Johannes Endres, Christoph Zeller
Published by: Boydell & Brewer, Camden House. (2022)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv24cnsjw.4
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact .
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Boydell & Brewer, Camden House are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Collecting in the Twenty-First Century
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,1: Collecting: Defining the Subject
Johannes Endres
The Time Capsule as a Case in Point
O N THE 23RD OF SEPTEMBER 1938, the first ever so-called time cap-
sule was buried at the site of the New York World’s Fair, which
was set to open in April 1939. To this day, it remains one of the most
ambitious projects of its kind. Should the creators of the capsule have
it their way, the cylindrically shaped, metal container, 7.5 feet tall and
8.75 inches in diameter, will not be unearthed until the year 6939 CE.1
The Westinghouse Time Capsule will then present its receiver from the
far future with a tangible impression of the “achievements” of Western
civilization on the eve of World War II. This, at least, is the scenario as
imagined in the Book of Record, copies of which were deposited in the
capsule and also distributed widely, including, in 3,649 copies, to lama-
series in Tibet, Shinto shrines in Japan, and Buddhist temples in India,
and to 2,000 libraries, museums and universities across the world.2 Like
the time capsule, the Book of Record was conceived by the Westinghouse
Electric Company, in collaboration with a group of scientists, engineers,
and advertising experts.3 The capsule’s content was selected by way of a
public idea contest under the direction of the vice president of the com-
pany; it provides a colorful display: from small items of daily use, such
as a can opener, safety pin, and toothbrush, to samples of textiles and
other materials, to all manner of seeds, banknotes, and other trifles, to
texts and images on microfilm and contemporary newsreels. Framed by
1 George Edward Pendray, The Story of the Westinghouse Time Capsule
(East Pittsburgh, PA: Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, 1939);
Johannes Endres, “Heterotopian Multilingualism: The Westinghouse Time Cap-
sule (1939),” Critical Multilingualism Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5,
no. 2 (2017): 149–67; Nick Yablon: Remembrance of Things Present: The Inven-
tion of the Time Capsule (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).
2 Pendray, The Story, 11–12.
3 The Book of Record of the Time Capsule of Cupaloy Deemed Capable of Resist-
ing the Effects of Time for Five Thousand Years, Preserving an Account of Universal
Achievements, Embedded in the Grounds of the New York World’s Fair 1939 (New
York: Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, 1938).
This content downloaded from 194.169.217.195 on Tue, 21 Mar 2023 20:02:53 UTC
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, COLLECTING: DEFINING THE SUBJECT 39
the capsule, such seemingly random everyday objects form a potentially
meaningful snapshot of the beginnings of the consumer age.
That after 5,000 years the capsule’s “message” might no longer be
intelligible is something its creators took into account. They equipped
it with a “Rosetta stone,” a linguistic apparatus intended to help recon-
struct the information inside the capsule by way of a reconstruction of the
language in which it is couched. In addition to the capsule itself, the intel-
ligibility of its content is therefore perishable too, and hence requires pro-
tection from the various threats of loss and forgetting. Collecting has in
this sense always been at once a “structure of objective devotion” and an
“epistemological practice,”4 a practice that the collector can nevertheless
only control to a certain degree. Instead, collections, like other cultural
technologies, operate in a future space that is both open and precarious.
To manage this “openness to the future” is,5 in fact, the very challenge
faced by all collecting, be it the stockpiling of food, the accumulation of
capital, the compilation of art, memorabilia, or collector’s items, the stor-
age of knowledge and information, or the kind of collections gathered in
time capsules—activities that, in different yet also similar ways, entail the
“selective, active, and longitudinal acquisition, possession, and disposition
of an inter-related set of differentiated objects.”6 As a result, collections
4 Michael Cahn, “Das Schwanken zwischen Abfall und Wert: Zur kulturel-
len Hermeneutik des Sammlers,” Merkur 45, no. 8 (1991): 674–90, here 676
and 679.
5 Alois Hahn, “Soziologie des Sammlers (unter besonderer Berücksichti-
gung der Institution des Museums),” in Konstruktionen des Selbst, der Welt und
der Geschichte: Aufsätze zur Kultursoziologie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2000), 440–62, here 442.
6 Russell W. Belk, Melanie Wallendorf, John F. Sherry, Jr., and Morris B.
Holbrook, “Collecting in a Consumer Culture,” in Highways and Buyways: Natu-
ralistic Research from the Consumer Behaviour Odyssey, ed. Russell Belk (Provo,
UT: Association for Consumer Research, 1991), 178–215, here 180. The defini-
tion seems to exclude money or food storage from the scope of collecting. Hence,
Belk et al. point out: “If the predominant value of an object or idea for the person
possessing it is intrinsic, i.e., if it is valued primarily for use, or purpose, or aes-
thetically pleasing quality, or the value inherent in the object or accruing to it by
whatever circumstance of custom, training or habit, it is not a collection.” While
that is a valid point by itself, it does not exclude intrinsically valuable objects
from the group of collectibles. For even the whole of a collection of valuable
items is worth more than the sum of its parts, something Marx theorized as the
“Mehrwert” (surplus value) of capital, as opposed to the “use value” represented
by its buying power. The same could be shown for stockpiling, which engen-
ders economic, cultural, and emotional assets greater than the sum of the items
collected—a fact immediately visible from images of stored food that reveal an
infrastructure of repositories, inventory lists, channels of trade etc. that amount
to more than just the material value of their content— or for databases, which
This content downloaded from 194.169.217.195 on Tue, 21 Mar 2023 20:02:53 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Camden House
Chapter Title: Collecting: Defining the Subject
Chapter Author(s): Johannes Endres
Book Title: Collecting in the Twenty-First Century
Book Subtitle: From Museums to the Web
Book Editor(s): Johannes Endres, Christoph Zeller
Published by: Boydell & Brewer, Camden House. (2022)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv24cnsjw.4
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact .
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Boydell & Brewer, Camden House are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Collecting in the Twenty-First Century
This content downloaded from 194.169.217.195 on Tue, 21 Mar 2023 20:02:53 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
,1: Collecting: Defining the Subject
Johannes Endres
The Time Capsule as a Case in Point
O N THE 23RD OF SEPTEMBER 1938, the first ever so-called time cap-
sule was buried at the site of the New York World’s Fair, which
was set to open in April 1939. To this day, it remains one of the most
ambitious projects of its kind. Should the creators of the capsule have
it their way, the cylindrically shaped, metal container, 7.5 feet tall and
8.75 inches in diameter, will not be unearthed until the year 6939 CE.1
The Westinghouse Time Capsule will then present its receiver from the
far future with a tangible impression of the “achievements” of Western
civilization on the eve of World War II. This, at least, is the scenario as
imagined in the Book of Record, copies of which were deposited in the
capsule and also distributed widely, including, in 3,649 copies, to lama-
series in Tibet, Shinto shrines in Japan, and Buddhist temples in India,
and to 2,000 libraries, museums and universities across the world.2 Like
the time capsule, the Book of Record was conceived by the Westinghouse
Electric Company, in collaboration with a group of scientists, engineers,
and advertising experts.3 The capsule’s content was selected by way of a
public idea contest under the direction of the vice president of the com-
pany; it provides a colorful display: from small items of daily use, such
as a can opener, safety pin, and toothbrush, to samples of textiles and
other materials, to all manner of seeds, banknotes, and other trifles, to
texts and images on microfilm and contemporary newsreels. Framed by
1 George Edward Pendray, The Story of the Westinghouse Time Capsule
(East Pittsburgh, PA: Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, 1939);
Johannes Endres, “Heterotopian Multilingualism: The Westinghouse Time Cap-
sule (1939),” Critical Multilingualism Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5,
no. 2 (2017): 149–67; Nick Yablon: Remembrance of Things Present: The Inven-
tion of the Time Capsule (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).
2 Pendray, The Story, 11–12.
3 The Book of Record of the Time Capsule of Cupaloy Deemed Capable of Resist-
ing the Effects of Time for Five Thousand Years, Preserving an Account of Universal
Achievements, Embedded in the Grounds of the New York World’s Fair 1939 (New
York: Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, 1938).
This content downloaded from 194.169.217.195 on Tue, 21 Mar 2023 20:02:53 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
, COLLECTING: DEFINING THE SUBJECT 39
the capsule, such seemingly random everyday objects form a potentially
meaningful snapshot of the beginnings of the consumer age.
That after 5,000 years the capsule’s “message” might no longer be
intelligible is something its creators took into account. They equipped
it with a “Rosetta stone,” a linguistic apparatus intended to help recon-
struct the information inside the capsule by way of a reconstruction of the
language in which it is couched. In addition to the capsule itself, the intel-
ligibility of its content is therefore perishable too, and hence requires pro-
tection from the various threats of loss and forgetting. Collecting has in
this sense always been at once a “structure of objective devotion” and an
“epistemological practice,”4 a practice that the collector can nevertheless
only control to a certain degree. Instead, collections, like other cultural
technologies, operate in a future space that is both open and precarious.
To manage this “openness to the future” is,5 in fact, the very challenge
faced by all collecting, be it the stockpiling of food, the accumulation of
capital, the compilation of art, memorabilia, or collector’s items, the stor-
age of knowledge and information, or the kind of collections gathered in
time capsules—activities that, in different yet also similar ways, entail the
“selective, active, and longitudinal acquisition, possession, and disposition
of an inter-related set of differentiated objects.”6 As a result, collections
4 Michael Cahn, “Das Schwanken zwischen Abfall und Wert: Zur kulturel-
len Hermeneutik des Sammlers,” Merkur 45, no. 8 (1991): 674–90, here 676
and 679.
5 Alois Hahn, “Soziologie des Sammlers (unter besonderer Berücksichti-
gung der Institution des Museums),” in Konstruktionen des Selbst, der Welt und
der Geschichte: Aufsätze zur Kultursoziologie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2000), 440–62, here 442.
6 Russell W. Belk, Melanie Wallendorf, John F. Sherry, Jr., and Morris B.
Holbrook, “Collecting in a Consumer Culture,” in Highways and Buyways: Natu-
ralistic Research from the Consumer Behaviour Odyssey, ed. Russell Belk (Provo,
UT: Association for Consumer Research, 1991), 178–215, here 180. The defini-
tion seems to exclude money or food storage from the scope of collecting. Hence,
Belk et al. point out: “If the predominant value of an object or idea for the person
possessing it is intrinsic, i.e., if it is valued primarily for use, or purpose, or aes-
thetically pleasing quality, or the value inherent in the object or accruing to it by
whatever circumstance of custom, training or habit, it is not a collection.” While
that is a valid point by itself, it does not exclude intrinsically valuable objects
from the group of collectibles. For even the whole of a collection of valuable
items is worth more than the sum of its parts, something Marx theorized as the
“Mehrwert” (surplus value) of capital, as opposed to the “use value” represented
by its buying power. The same could be shown for stockpiling, which engen-
ders economic, cultural, and emotional assets greater than the sum of the items
collected—a fact immediately visible from images of stored food that reveal an
infrastructure of repositories, inventory lists, channels of trade etc. that amount
to more than just the material value of their content— or for databases, which
This content downloaded from 194.169.217.195 on Tue, 21 Mar 2023 20:02:53 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
