Time Capsule

Tomorrow my school closes forever.

In September we move to a new school site (The Moss) where Jacquie and Paul, my children, went in the 80's and 90's. To celebrate the opening we decided to make a Time Capsule, which was constructed by Dave my brother from stainless steel with an engraved plate on the top.

Today we filled the Time Capsule with newspapers, letters, coins and greetings from the children at both of our old school sites. The contents have been wrapped in aluminium foil like sandwiches and carefully placed in the Time Capsule tube. The tube has now been sealed with the many bolts and tonoght we took it to the site of our new site for burial.

In the Time Capsule were some DVD Videos and CD's which included digital information and contained Powerpoint Presentations and Word Documents.
The question is...will anyone in the future be able to access these resources? Will DVD and CD media retain the digital data for the next 50 years?

The thought of making a Time Capsule has really made me think, particularly with the digital media resources ... a lot of questions!

Do you remember the Sony Beta- Max, Philips and Grundig Video recorders, the 8-track car tapes, cassette tapes, reel-to reel-tapes, floppy discs, vinyl records? Even VHS is now obsolete!

It's only a matter of time before CD's DVD's and memory sticks are replaced and what about the Hard Drive...will it survive? Nobody yet has thought of something that will replace the HD's digital capacity...and guess what? It runs from a motor...it's mechanical (and analogue!)

Which is one good reason not to put a hard drive into a Time Capsule...the bearings will seize!!