Comments on: The Times Machine

The Times Machine

peacay — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:01:48 -0800

The Times Machine allows easy browsing of every edition from 70 years (1851-1922) worth of New York Times in the original format. Very cool.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:09:45 -0800

Wow, this is pretty amazing: every page of these things! Bookmarked, and thanks for the post.

By: Mike D

Mike D — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:12:23 -0800

"Very cool" does it, indeed. Many moons ago I had a fulll-sized copy of the Titanic front page on my university residence wall. (The NYT took a big chance with that story and actually broke it in a smaller front page box with their final edition the day before it lit up everywhere else.) I got it from Ottawa's National Library in the pre-internet days. My own cool factor among my collegues in Journalism rose considerably.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:17:39 -0800

omg this is fabulous! Thanks for the treasure peacay.

By: beagle

beagle — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:18:06 -0800

Very cool. One reason the Times may be doing this: those years through 1922 are in the public domain, copyright has expired. Anyone can scan the microfilm and put up the same archive, and at least one site (newspaperarchive.com) has done so (through 1909 at this point). I picked a date at random, and by pure chance the very first story I looked at was on this page, bottom of the third column "THE GLENN COURT-MARTIAL.; Evidence that the Water Cure Was Used by New York Police Barred ." (The court-martial dealt with torture similar to waterboarding used by US forces in the Philippines.) The more things change ...

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:26:18 -0800

Incredible. I weep when I think of the hours I used to spend fiddling with microfilm machines, trying to find the page and story I wanted and hoping it would be legible. Many thanks for this post. And the fact that when you hover over a story there's a pop-up box from which you can copy without even clicking and opening up that story is amazing. I love: KAISER'S FALL FAILS TO EXCITE LONDON; Absorbed by Lord Mayor's Show, People Accept Abdication News Calmly. And who remembers this result of WWI any more? GERMAN DYNASTIES BEING WIPED OUT; King of Wuerttemberg Abdicates--Sovereign of Saxony to Follow Suit. PRINCES MAY BE EXILED Socialists Are Demanding That Every Sovereign in the Empire Shall be Dethroned Great post!

By: DU

DU — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:27:44 -0800

AWFUL EVENT. They certainly knew how to write a headline back then.

By: GhostintheMachine

GhostintheMachine — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:29:49 -0800

Am I missing how this is different from when it was announced they were opening up its archives?

By: otio

otio — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:35:57 -0800

Yes.

By: cashman

cashman — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:37:49 -0800

No search?

By: thanotopsis

thanotopsis — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:43:03 -0800

No search? If you want some powerful searching, and you have a real need for it, I suggest ponying up for a Ancestry subscription. Not only have they had the Times archives up there for a while, but they combine them with local and regional papers. My favorite stuff is to go through Obits and Marriage announcements and end up finding first-source proof of specific cousins' existence.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:46:39 -0800

GhostintheMachine: "Am I missing how this is different from when it was announced they were opening up its archives?" That was just individual articles that you could search for, this actually recreates the whole paper for each day so that you can read it in context.

By: cashman

cashman — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:46:59 -0800

That's just kind of sucky that they didn't put a search on it. Or am I just missing it?

By: mistersquid

mistersquid — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:52:50 -0800

Does anyone know when this feature debuted?

By: elgilito

elgilito — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:56:19 -0800

I found this by accident this morning. I was looking for information about my great-great-grandfather, an automobile pioneer who participated in 1894 in one of the first "horseless carriages" competitions. And even though he was not one of the "winners in the road-wagon race", the NYT reported that he got a "twenty-pound consolation award" because his "carriage broke down owing to the bursting of a tube, an accident which was judged as by no means detracting from the efficiency of his steam trap" (here). I also found in the legal archives of Luxemburg some patent information related to the steam-powered road trains that he sold all over Europe a century ago. The internet is fantastic (massive amounts of on-line teh stoopid notwithstanding.)

By: peacay

peacay — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:58:53 -0800

cashman, there's a drop down search on the NYT front page that purports to search across 130 years of archives. It doesn't seem to like "quoted terms" even on the advance page using the headline field - "titanic sinks" returns no results but "titanic" returns many, many, many contemporary stories.

By: uncleozzy

uncleozzy — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:10:21 -0800

GAMBLERS EAT GAMECOCKS.; Ice-Bound and Forced to Feast on Their Fighting Chickens.

By: yarrow

yarrow — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:10:38 -0800

Wow, this is very cool. It's the hundredth anniversary of the PATH subway under the Hudson today (free PATH rides until 11 tonight!) so I went and read the coverage from 2/26/1908.

By: KevinSkomsvold

KevinSkomsvold — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:23:55 -0800

Awesome Peacay. Great post. Re: Lincoln assassination. Did I read the article right that after Lincoln was shot and brought to the doctor that someone else snuck in and stabbed Lincoln twice? Or was it Dr. Seward?

By: Item

Item — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:28:22 -0800

Kevin, Steward was stabbed by Louis Powell with a Bowie knife on the same night Booth shot Lincoln.

By: Item

Item — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:28:58 -0800

er, 'Seward', 'Lewis'

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:31:17 -0800

Secretary Seward was stabbed in another attempted assassination.

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:32:39 -0800

This is incredibly cool, btw. Thanks, peacay! And damn you, item!

By: uncleozzy

uncleozzy — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:47:34 -0800

I should have noted that I really dig this, and could probably spend all day looking at old ads for player pianos and rye whiskey, instead of, you know, quoting a silly headline.

By: dinsdale

dinsdale — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:59:26 -0800

further to beagle's point above, I would add that thanks to Sonny Bono, history ends on Jan 1. 1923. This may seem like a sarcastic nit-pick now, but if an effective DRM (aka "trusted computing") system is ever devised it may quite literally be true...

By: DU

DU — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:05:21 -0800

So Seward was stabbed in the face and body (while lying in bed recovering from an unrelated, but near-fatal, carriage accident) and his son was hit on the head with a pistol, nearly killing him...but Mrs Seward is the one who expired? Because of the "toll" the events took on her? WOMENAMIRITE?

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:15:26 -0800

The NYT archives from the front page is free to search but pay to view. So I guess you can use that to search for an article, than go back and find it using the The Times Machine for free.

By: peacay

peacay — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:27:04 -0800

It's only pay for view post-1922.

By: jenkinsEar

jenkinsEar — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:35:24 -0800

There's a fascinating change in tone between the articles in 1865 and 1880. The civil war coverage was very subjective, very much in the first person. By 1880, the articles are much closer to the objective newspaper tone we expect today. Fascinating to see all of these articles in context with each other, and the ways the momentous events of the day were covered ( Lee's surrender vs armistice day).

By: surfdad

surfdad — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:01:03 -0800

Superb - any sign of the London Times doing the same?

By: Your Time Machine Sucks

Your Time Machine Sucks — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:04:11 -0800

This Times Machine Rocks.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:43:37 -0800

Ragtime!

By: beagle

beagle — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:54:01 -0800

It's only pay for view post-1922. Correct -- again, I suspect the purpose of this is to bug the freeloaders at NewsArchive.com, who are charging for this same public-domain content and don't have nearly as good a search. You can also use Advanced Search, which for some reason doesn't show on the NYT front page, but there's a link that comes up after you do one search via the FP. One other piece of trivia: beginning in 1927, the Times started printing an archival edition on 100% rag paper years printed an archival edition -- after finishing their normal newsprint press run, they put the top-quality rag paper on the press and printed more copies for library volumes. The microfilm was later produced from these archival volumes; hence it is easier to read scans much more accurately into the digital text form. (See also.) (In the earliest years of this 1851-1922 archive, nearly all newspapers were still printed on rag paper, but the brittle wood pulp paper starting coming in not long after the Civil War (the Times switched to wood pulp paper in 1870). The Times microfilm up to 1927 was shot from the standard edition, but they must have been careful about archiving their best printed copies during most of this time.)

By: Hugonaut

Hugonaut — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:21:24 -0800

Thanks, peacay! Public domain is wonderful, isn't it?

By: NorthernLite

NorthernLite — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:28:26 -0800

Oh, this is so cool - I'm such a geek for stuff like this. I looked up my dad's b-day, June 2, 1920. Then I went back to the previous Sunday for a bigger issue. Articles on the post-war sedition/ deportation controversies (oh, we are a slow-to-learn people). I'm fascinated by the ads. (Notice, there's no phone numbers in store ads, even in 1920.) I see no sports coverage (too plebian) but my perfunctory glance finds no arts (music/ theatre) coverage either. There was a Review of Books.

By: dontoine

dontoine — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:49:58 -0800

Um, old news?

By: gaspode

gaspode — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:05:51 -0800

Awesomeness. Thanks, peacay.

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:18:54 -0800

I see no sports coverage His name is Babe Ruth. He is built like a bale of cotton and pitches lefthanded for the Boston Red Sox. All left-handers are peculiar, and Babe is no exception, because he can also bat. Between his pitching and batting at the Polo Grounds yesterday the Yankees were as comfortable as a lamplighter in a gunpowder factory. -- June 3, 1915

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:55:14 -0800

There was a Review of Books The New York Times has published a book section since 1896.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:59:57 -0800

October 10, 1896 - first book review section.

By: beagle

beagle — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:03:21 -0800

It looks like we broke it. The service is off line now. Somebody above asked how long this has been up. I believe the answer is that it was launched today. Here's the inside scoop on the technology behind this, for the geekishly inclined.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:04:13 -0800

The BoingBoing post on TimesMachine says it is "hackable"--what does that mean?

By: orelius

orelius — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:55:38 -0800

Still "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" as of now.

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:46:40 -0800

Gone.

By: beagle

beagle — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:18:30 -0800

It was fun while it lasted.