UPDATES (added as available):
The streams are no longer live, but will be watchable for a time at the MOGov periscope feed, on iOS and Android. More video from the opening will be available later from the Office of Administration.
10:34 a.m. New Stream is up now, taking a closer look at the items inside the capsule.
10:15 a.m. First stream has ended. Another one will be up soon with a look at what’s in the capsule. We’ll post that link here.
9:40 first stream active now! Once the capsule is opened, it will be moved to another location and another stream will begin.
9:18 a.m. No streams yet. Links to streams will be posted at @MOGov on Twitter, and follow MOGov on Periscope for streams there when they go active.
ORIGINAL STORY:
The time capsule pulled from the cornerstone of the Missouri State Capitol will be opened at 9 a.m. Thursday, a process that can be seen live online.
A time capsule from 1915 was extracted from the Missouri State Capitol Cornerstone on June 9th, 2015.
The capsule will be opened in a laboratory in the State Forensics Lab, in part to protect its contents. That means very few people will be able to be there in person, but the State will offer live streams of parts of the opening. One will be on Periscope, an application for the Apple operating system and Android. The other will be a web-based stream that will not require the download of the Periscope app. Links to both will be sent out over the State of Missouri Twitter Account, and will be posted here as soon as they are available (check back in this story after 9 a.m. Thursday).
Office of Administration spokesperson Ryan Burns says viewers will get to see the removal of items that have been in that capsule for 100-years, by conservation experts from the State Archives.
“Hopefully the items are in good enough condition we’ll have a bit of an explanation from the conservators as to what they think each item is,” Burns told Missourinet. “We won’t be physically opening each of the potentially rolled up or folded old documents, but to the extent that we can lay them out and get footage of each item to see what it is.”
Video footage of the opening and removal will later be posted online at mo.gov/timecapsule.
Items expected to be in the capsule include various newspapers, legislative documents related to creating the Capitol Commission board, the amendment to the constitution that authorized the building of the Missouri State Capitol, a copy of the state constitution, Secretary of State manuals from 1911 and 1913, design specifications of the Capitol, photographs of the Capitol and its predecessor, and a Bible.
“As soon as the contents are removed from the time capsule they will go into the possession of the conservators from the Missouri State Archives,” said Burns. “They handle items and materials of this age frequently and they specialize in doing that, so they will immediately begin whatever process it is that they follow to try to keep the items in such a condition so that can be viewed by generations to come. That’s our hope.”
Burns reminds Missourians that there is still time to submit ideas for what will be put in a new time capsule to be sealed in the Capitol cornerstone until 2115. Those ideas can be submitted at mo.gov/timecapsule or on Twitter using the hashtag #MOTimeCapsule until midnight, Saturday night.
