Times Online has rolled out an elaborate digital newspaper archive stretching back more than 200 years. The archive includes more than 20 million articles from every edition of the Times except for a small number of damaged issues from 1785 to 1985, says a Guardian report.
It includes the Thunderer's coverage of events such as the Battle of Waterloo, the first convicts arriving at Botany Bay and the execution of Marie Antoinette. Other issues cover the 1851 Great Exhibition, the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888 and Amelia Earhart's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1932.
The archive also includes letters to the editor, photographs and adverts, with each page presented as it was printed in the paper on a parchment-coloured screen.
Anne Spackman, the editor-in-chief of Times Online, said that the Times wanted the project to set the gold standard for an online newspaper archive for "arguably the most famous newspaper in the world". The archive is currently free, and Spackman says no decision will be taken about whether it will remain free or require a subscription until it has generated a solid userbase.
Thomson Gale has already digitally archived the first 200 years of back issues of the Times. Recent work was carried out by web archive specialist Olive to adapt the format to fit the Times Online site.
