The Crypt of Civilization, a multimillennial time capsule, is a chamber that was sealed behind a stainless steel door in 1940 at Oglethorpe
While engaged in research and inspired by the openings of the Egyptian pyramids in the 1920s, Oglethorpe University president Thornwell Jacobs (1877-1956), was struck by the relative lack of information on ancient civilizations.
Peters, an inventor and photographer, invented the first microfilm camera using 35 mm film to photograph documents.Inside the crypt are stainless steel canisters with microfilms of many classic works of literature, including the Bible, the Koran, Homer’s Iliad, and Dante’s Inferno. Producer David O. Selznik donated an original copy of the script for the movie Gone With the Wind. There are approximately 640,000 pages of microfilm from more than 800 works.
In the event that electricity is not in use in 8113, the crypt holds a generator operated by a windmill to drive the apparatus, as well as a seven-power magnifier to read the microfilm records by hand.
In the front of the sealed chamber is the “language integrator,” a machine to teach those who open the crypt how to speak English.
The inventory of the crypt includes artifacts ranging from the useful (a typewriter, a radio, a cash register, and an adding machine) to the curious (dental floss, plastic toys of Donald Duck and the Lone Ranger, the contents of a woman’s purse, and a specially sealed bottle of Budweiser bee
