New York Times launches TimesMachine (for viewing old newspapers)

The New York Times has launched a nifty browser for reading old newspapers. Like really old. The company has scanned copies of every issue from 1851 through the end of 1922 and put the results online as a series of PDF files. That means you can read stories about the Civil War, World War I, and the sinking of the titanic just as they originally appeared a hundred years ago. Except, you know, on a computer screen and not newsprint.

Boing Boing reports there's also a publicly available API, which means you can create your own browser or other application that will pull together old newspaper issues.

Tags: new-york-times, newspaper, timesmachine