University of Chicago Opens Time-Capsule!
Two of Sandbox’s more highfalutin clients, the University of Chicago and Fermilab, came together yesterday in an odd, possibly exciting way.
As I’m sure you’ve heard… the University of Chicago opened a time-capsule yesterday that was entombed in the cornerstone of U of C’s Research Institute Building for more than 60 years. The Research Institute Building once housed the Enrico Fermi Institute, where in the the early 1940s, Enrico Fermi led a team of scientists who built the first nuclear reactor. Enrico Fermi won a Nobel Prize for his nuclear research in 1938 and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory was later named after him.
So to recap, the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi, nuclear reactors, and Fermilab all mashed up in the unveiling of a time-capsule! Thoughts of radioactive materials, mutant life trapped in a box for 60 years, the secrets of alchemy… the possibilities of what could be in the time-capsule were endless! Children fainted from excitement, scientist’s glasses fogged over, it was anarchy!
And then they opened it. Inside was a 1948 U of C telephone directory, a Capital Airlines timetable, a 1927 buffalo nickel, a road map, an announcement book, more timetables, science books, and an architectural rendering of the very building the time capsule was housed in.
I’m not going to say it was wildly disappointing, I’m just glad Enrico Fermi spent most of his time studying nuclear physics and polishing his Nobel Prize.
Photo: University of Chicago
