LIFE Photo Archives Online

LIFE Magazine was famous for its own photography. In addition, it had one heck of a photo archive. Now some of that work is available online, stretching as far back as the 1870s (long before the publication came into existence).

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

I'm finding that the description doesn't quite mesh with what I can see on the site. No matter how I search, whether by decade, year, or topic, the maximum number of photos that come back seems to be 200. For those who need old pictures for projects, remember that in the U.S., anything from before 1923 is in the public domain.

Newly Found Pictures of Second Lincoln Inauguration

I heard this story on National Public Radio and found it delightful. The Library of Congress had, through misreading somewhat illegible hand-written logs in the 1940s, misfiled some pictures of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural. The Library put its photos and other images online recently, and a research found the mistake. The story link has some of the images, and full-sized ones are available there for the download.