12 Million Historic Photos Scanned to Web

Snosty writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that British Pathe, a cinema news service dating to the 19th century, has scanned one image for every second of their 3500 hours of 35mm film. That makes for 12 million images covering everything from the Boer War to the Beatles available on their web site!"

Hi-Res?

[Brahmastra]

Are the scans Hi-Res so that photo quality prints can be reproduce well into the future? The article seems to say they are streamlined for download over a 56K Modem. I hope there are Hi-Res versions available too

Historical benefit

[BWJones]

So, the posting of photographic archives like this are crucial to historians and historical research. It is absolutely amazing how much information can be gleaned from photographs in terms of street names, individuals, automobile license plates etc... that enable one to pull out the history from bits of information surrounding the subject in photographs. Recently, I was given access to an archive of photos from my late grandfather who was in the OSS, and I am absolutely amazed at the amount of history in these photos. There are images of the meeting with Stalin, Rosevelt and Churchill, images of partisans stringing up Musolini, images of streets and individuals that I would absolutely love to spend time investigating, perhaps even getting another Ph.D. thesis out of it.

Free stuff on archive.org

[Bazman]

www.archive.org has a fantastic collection of free movies, including some newsreels, all free to use and redistribute - look here [archive.org].

The Prelinger archive there is a wonderful treasury of historical material. And the free license means you can cut n paste any of it into your own video projects.