Lost in the Cornerstone: The 1916 NBS Time Capsule Re-Discovery

Mystery in the Cornerstone 

In 1916, construction began on a Chemistry Building for the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) Washington, D. C. campus. A cornerstone laying celebration for the new building was held on March 23, 1916. The Secretary of Commerce William C. Redfield was present and participated by placing a layer of masonry cement to secure the cornerstone.

By 1970, NBS had moved from Washington, D.C. to a new campus in Gaithersburg, MD. The southern portion of the old D.C. campus, including the Chemistry Building, was turned over to the U.S. State Department to be redeveloped to house foreign embassies. In the early 1980s the Chemistry Building and other former NBS laboratories were torn down. During the demolition, a bulldozer driver unearthed a sealed metal box. Not knowing what it was, he took the box home and pried open the welded-shut lid.

A Time Capsule 

Inside the box was a six-piece set of NBS Standard Reference Materials (SRM) and a few documents, which described the box as an NBS time capsule. The time capsule had been encased under the cornerstone of the Chemistry Building in 1916, and then forgotten. 

The time capsule included photos of the groundbreaking for the Chemistry Building, which had occurred several months earlier, a group photo and roster of the NBS chemistry staff, several NBS publications and a 1916 newspaper, plus a few more items and the six SRMs: No. 5b (cast iron), No. 10b (Bessemer steel), No. 27 ("Sibley" iron ore), No. 30 (chrome-vanadium steel), No. 37 (sheet brass), and No. 40 (sodium oxalate). The SRMs represented an important part of the Chemistry division’s work at that time. The 1916 NBS annual report notes that requests for these standard samples had increased almost 50% over the previous year. 

The bulldozer driver held on to the time capsule for many years, but eventually its paper contents were turned over to the NIST museum in 1994. The capsule itself, still containing the SRMs, was given to the museum in 2024. 

History Not Repeating Itself 

In the NIST museum is another time capsule sealed during NIST’s centennial in March 2001. To not repeat the past and forget, this time capsule is kept in plain sight. It is scheduled to be opened in 2051.

Example of how to reference this exhibit:
NIST Museum. 2024. Lost in the Cornerstone: The 1916 NBS Time Capsule Re-Discovery. Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology. Online. https://www.nist.gov/nist-museum/lost-cornerstone-1916-nbs-time-capsule-re-discovery

Author. Year. Exhibit Name. Place published: Publisher. Online. URL.