UConn Engineers Bury 100 Years of Technology

STORRS, CT — Artifacts from the University of Connecticut Engineering School's first century on Thursday were sealed and buried in a time capsule on the grounds of the new engineering and science building.

The idea is to open the capsule in another 100 years and compare, UConn officials said. The ceremony was the closing event of Engineering’s year-long Centennial Celebration.

“We all believe and hope that we will continue living in memories, and nothing is a stronger key to memories than artifacts,” Engineering Dean Kazem Kazerounian said. “The artifacts that we are placing in this capsule are the results of many decades, if not centuries, of the technological evolution of the human race. I would give anything to know what people will think about these artifacts 100 years from now.”

The capsule contains some of the current technology developed at UConn, such as a superconductor fabricated by materials science and engineering students, electrodes from the biomedical engineering department, and 3-D printed objects from the mechanical engineering department and the additive manufacturing Center.

Other items include a flag that was taken to the International Space Station by Astronaut Richard Mastracchio, who graduated from UConn in 1982; a slide rule; a UConn recruitment video from the late 1990s; a Nokia cell phone from 1980s that originally sold for $3,000; a Lego Jonathan, the UConn Husky mascot; natiojnal title basketball stuff; a hand-held calculator; a computer punch card; a floppy disk and a flash drive, UConn officials said.

More than 60 items in total were buried, UConn officials said. See the list here.

See more about the event here.

Photo Credit: Christopher LaRosa/UConn