**History and Development**:
– Wayback Machine started archiving web pages in 1996.
– Internet Archive founders launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001.
– The archive reached over 10 billion pages by its launch in 2001.
– Wayback Machine founded by Brewster Kahle.
– Initial launch of Wayback Machine in 2001.
– Internet Archive and Sun Microsystems collaborated for archiving.
– Wayback Machine data center unveiled in 2009.
– Updates and improvements made to the Wayback Machine over the years.
**Technical Information**:
– Software crawls the Web for publicly accessible information.
– Archive-It.org allows institutions to preserve digital content.
– Crawls are contributed by various sources like Sloan Foundation and Alexa.
– Worldwide Web Crawls capture global web content.
– Documents are stored with time-stamped URLs for easy retrieval.
– Wayback Machine’s storage capacity has grown over the years.
– In 2003, it was growing at a rate of 12 terabytes per month.
– The data is stored on custom PetaBox rack systems.
– By 2009, it contained approximately three petabytes of data.
**Features and Updates**:
– A new version with an updated interface was tested in 2011.
– Features like Changes, Summary, and a graphical site map were added.
– The company installed additional PetaBox racks in 2011 to increase storage.
– In January 2013, a milestone of 240 billion URLs was announced.
– Save a Page feature was introduced in October 2013 for archiving URLs.
**Legal Issues and Challenges**:
– Legal cases have been brought against the Internet Archive.
– Lawsuits and settlements related to web archiving.
– Internet Archive’s settlement with Shell over Wayback Machine use.
– Legal admissibility of Internet Archive snapshots.
– Challenges related to copyright infringement and access rights.
– Uniform Electronic Transactions Act implications.
**Significance, Impact, and Usage**:
– Wayback Machine serves as a time capsule for the internet.
– Wayback Machine used for fact-checking and context.
– Wayback Machine assists in fixing broken links on the internet.
– Wayback Machine used for research, fact-checking, and website restoration.
– Donations support the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine.
– Role of Wayback Machine in retrieving vanished URLs.
– Use of Internet Archive for investigative research.
– Admissibility of Internet evidence in legal contexts.
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" to see how websites looked in the past. Its founders, Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, developed the Wayback Machine to provide "universal access to all knowledge" by preserving archived copies of defunct web pages.
 | |
Type of site | Archive |
|---|---|
| Founded |
|
| Area served | Worldwide (except China, Russia, and Bahrain) |
| Owner | Internet Archive |
| URL | web |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
| Current status | Active |
| Written in | HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python |
Launched on May 10, 1996, the Wayback Machine had saved more than 38.2 billion web pages at the end of 2009. As of January 3, 2024, the Wayback Machine has archived more than 860 billion web pages and well over 99 petabytes of data.