The Wayback Machine is a great tool, but I didn't realize how important and extensive this library of Internet history actually is—and what the Internet Archive, which maintains this collection, does.
In a recent report CNN showed many interesting facts (via PC gamer) about the Wayback Machine and, more broadly, about the Internet Archive. At its core, Wayback is a time machine that allows you to go back to previous versions of web pages – or, if you prefer, it's a TARDIW (Time and relative measurements on the Internet).
There's more to the Wayback Machine than that, though, as well as the broader activities of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit run by software engineers and librarians—so here's my list of five surprising facts.
1. A trillion pages in the book of the Internet
A little over a month ago, The Wayback Machine has registered its trillionth web page.which is confusing. We're told that this library is currently growing, with web pages approaching 150 TB (that's 150,000 GB) every day.
2. Server Sanctuary
The Internet Archive is based in the Richmond district of San Francisco, USA, in what was formerly known as the Fourth Church of Christ Scientist, an impressive piece of architecture with eight huge columns along the façade (reminiscent of the organization's logo).
The church still has its stained glass windows, but inside there is now a bunch of servers storing valuable data for the Wayback Machine – although, of course, there aren't more than a trillion web pages within the walls of the headquarters. Most of the Internet Archive's servers are located in a large warehouse outside San Francisco.
The ministers of the former church are symbolically located in the main sanctuary of the building.
3. The importance of preserving the Internet
It is important to maintain historical snapshots of web pages, whether those sites are run by governments, corporations, other organizations, or even individual blogs. The ability to see change can shed light on the motives of said organizations and preserve pieces of written content that would otherwise be erased from our collective memory (eventually).
In the event that governments make changes to official websites, it can be vital for journalists to have access to previous versions of the web pages to clearly see the impact of any changes.
4. Not just web pages
The Internet Archive is designed not only to preserve the history of the Internet, but also to digitize books (see above) and other media such as vintage vinyl records (as far back as the 1920s), CDs, cassettes, videotapes, television shows and video games.
I was not even remotely aware of the variety of historical records that the Archives maintains on this matter.
5. Founded by an Internet pioneer
Brewster Goodfounder of the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine (in 2001), was a pioneer of the Internet and previously co-created the predecessor to the World Wide Web. This was WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers), the first distributed search and document retrieval system to appear on the Internet.
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