100 Objects #1: The Century Safe
The Century Safe was designed as a time capsule to commemorate America's 100th birthday in 1876. It was filled with objects intended to tell the nation's story and was opened in 1976, revealing unexpected contents. This new series explores how the objects we choose to remember reflect our understanding of history.
- ▪The Century Safe was sealed for a hundred years and opened in 1976.
- ▪It was filled with objects chosen by citizens to represent America's story.
- ▪The series hosted by Roman Mars and Jill Lepore examines the significance of these objects in understanding American history.
99% Invisible files mainly under podcasts. We currently carry 6 of its stories.
Story provenance
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | 99% Invisible |
| Canonical URL | https://99percentinvisible.org/?p=48037 |
| Publication time | Tue, 19 May 2026 07:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-19T07:04:57.441Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-19T07:05:05.724Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | dmYPU8pMobK_ |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Episode Object #1 100 Objects #1: The Century Safe PlayPause Click to enlarge image History Category History Date 05.19.26 Producer 99PI Add to QueueRemove from QueueDownloadTranscript Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Leave a Comment A locked iron safe, sealed for a hundred years. Which objects did Americans choose to tell their story? “The Century Safe” was designed as a time capsule. In 1876, as America celebrated its 100th birthday, a group of citizens filled the safe with objects they trusted to tell the country’s story — to be opened at the next great anniversary, in 1976. Now, on the eve of America’s 250th birthday, we’re looking back at how the nation has marked these milestones, and what those celebrations actually reveal.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at 99% Invisible.
