Interested in what the papers were saying up to 200 years ago?
Posted on September 6, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Commentary, Entertainment.
Well Google have just released their most impressive service in a long long time. Over at News Archive Search you can search on a bunch of newspapers worldwide going way back. In many cases you have to pay to see the scan of the paper itself but you can read the actual text for free.
As a test I put in the phrase “famine Ireland” and then selected “before 1880″ and found a newspaper article from The Republican Compiler of Gettysburg on March 1st 1847 which mentions the suffering caused by the Irish famine.
This is an incredibly powerful tool for anyone interested in what was really going on at a particular time rather than the interpretation put on things by historians.
As a tool for schoolkids, it really does boggle the mind compared to what I grew up with. I remember our Irish history book in the Inter Cert doing 1922 to 1969 in a couple of pages and then stopping at 1969.
Imagine if the Irish Times, The Indo and whoever owns the rights to The Irish Press were to hand over their archives to Google Ireland? Hell, I’d be happy to see my tax euros spent on paying them to do it.
Next query, “bombing of Dresden”. Dunno why but it was the first thing that popped into my head after the famine. Oh I’m a barrel of laughs today.
tags: Google, News+Archive+Search, The+Irish+Press, The+Irish+Times, The+Irish+Independent
2 Replies to "Interested in what the papers were saying up to 200 years ago?"
conor on December 19, 2006
Cher Bobby, mon ami Canadien, je suis desolee que tu n’aime pas mon blog.
I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls but seriously pet, where the hell does the phrase “Irish Culture” appear on my blog? If you are looking for culture there are many many far more erudite bloggers than I over at irishblogs.ie.
I love the use of the words culture and fricken in the same sentence. Formidable.
To quote Rip Torn in Canadian Bacon (the only vaguely intelligent thing Michael Moore has ever written): “The metric system, for the love of god”
Bobby on December 19, 2006
Your website sucks! Like seriously put more information on it! I mean like some people want to learn about Irish Culture and all you can do i say like fricken nothing. So anyway yea put on more information and your website would be awesome!
bye