Wouldn’t it be great to be able to travel back in time? OK, I grew up on “Star Trek: TOS” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series) and I always thought the time travel episodes were the greatest. Also, for you really old folks out there like me do you remember “The Time Tunnel” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Tunnel)?
Are you ready for this? I found a way to travel back in time starting in 1996 with the “Internet Archive Wayback Machine” (www.archive.org). I thought that I would share it with you today so that you may also travel in time!
Now don’t get too excited as you can only travel through the world of the internet.
Pretend that you are discussing your company’s old website, before you worked there, or before the name change. You have a disagreement with someone on what other products you sold then. With the Wayback Machine you can most likely find the site back to around 1996. I checked out the DoubleClicks.info site and found the first page I had ever built for the column – way back in December, 2002. It also had copies of the site as recent as July, 2007.
Just type in the site you are looking for and you may find what it looked like back in 1996 up until more recently. Another interesting aspect of it is that if you click a link on the archived site it will take you to that linked site to around that same time!
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that was started to build an internet library. Normal libraries are used to store information on books, magazines, research materials, etc. both young and old. Wayback has the same idea in mind. It offers a “…permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.” It is located in the Presidio of San Francisco (www.nps.gov/archive/prsf/home.htm) which is a part of the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.
The Wayback site includes text, audio, images, software and obviously a compilation of web pages (85 billion, more or less).
The site has lots of things to look at and research with a few clicks. It has an area where you can even search books. If the book you search for has no copyright on it you can even read it online. My wife suggested searching for “Anne of Green Gables”. In less than a minute I had a copy of it displayed on my computer for her to read, save or even print to read later. Of course if you are going to print one make sure you have a lot of paper ready to go.
This is an all around great site. Take a trip back in time and let me know what you were able to find.
