Internet Archive – Wayback Machine

As the number of new dot com failures has risen, previously existing Web sites have ceased operations and their information content has vanished into the Web's past. Web pages were created, changed, and died, with no record of those pages being retained.

The Internet Archive has been storing Web pages , including graphics files, since 1996 from publicly accessible Web sites. With the October 2001 launch of the Wayback Machine, this huge archive is now freely available to the Web public.

The Wayback Machine is a front end to the Internet Archive's collection of public Web pages. It includes more than 100 terabytes of date. The Wayback Machine provides access to this wealth of data by URLs. It is not text searchable—a user needs to know the exact URL of a particular Web page, or at least the Web site, to be able to enter the archive.

There are many uses for the archive from the Wayback Machine. It is a great source to find the information on pages when the page or host itself is unavailable. When you come across a "404 not found" or similar message on the Web, just check on the Wayback Machine to find a copy of the page as it used to look.

Historical researchers can now view significant portions of the Web as it existed at various times from 1996 to the present. Sources lost because of complex URL shifting can be found by their old URL on the Wayback Machine. To checkout this Internet archive of vanished web pages visit http://www.archive.org