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They didn't have online dating sites back in the 1960s. You had Computer Dating.

I'm not saying finding the Titanic wasn't important but archaeologically speaking it is far less important than the Mary Rose.

On the one hand we have the Titanic which sunk in 1912, we know virtually everything about, it's design, it's passenger list etc. Heck we even have film footage of it.

On the other hand we have the Marry Rose which sank in 1545 and (according to Wikipedia) "The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of immeasurable value as a Tudor-era time capsule. [...] The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies and a wide array of objects used by the crew. Many of the artefacts are unique to the Mary Rose and have provided insights into topics ranging from naval warfare to the history of musical instruments.".

Depends on how well T3 does the cataloging and website, and how much they charge for copies.

If it turns out the works are more easily accessible and searchable than at present, and the charges are reasonable (think ), then it's a good thing.

If the catalog website is poorly designed (see the existing DoD website), or if T3 decides to charge, well, DoD prices for things, then not so good.

You'll like this little gem better.

Here you go.

Here you go.

As others have pointed out, this isn't a very good idea for high speed rail. It's not original, either. It was proposed in Taiwan a few years ago, and that design is more workable.

It's been used a few times for very low speed systems in amusement parks. The original, of course, was the moving sidewalk at the 190 Paris Exposition. That had two speeds of moving walkway side by side, to allow getting on and off. The mechanism was not a conveyor belt. It was an endless train of railroad flatcars with turntables between them. Also see the Never Stop Railway, in 1925, which is a cute mechanical solution to slowing down at stations.

Some railroads have used systems where cars were dropped off the rear of a train while the train was in motion. This never worked all that well, and there was no reverse operation to assemble the train on the fly. It's been suggested for transit systems where all cars have power, and it could be made to work.

In the UK http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=70764
Japan http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/27/polar_bear_breeding/
Germany http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/15260029

I found a video of the contraption that is shown in one of the pictures of TFA here. Conspicuously, it only shows a daring engineer rocking back and forth in the cockpit, while never showing the legs of the thing actually moving. Would be great if anyone could dig up more video of this. Needs more brass wheels and handles to qualify for proper steampunk, though.

There's also the BBC's Creative Archive, which is not yet launched.

iMP is just entering the second round of closed Beta testing I believe. It's not available for public Beta testing at this time.

I'd also recommend checking out some of the excellent historical footage on the British Pathe site. This archive is now represented by ITN.

You might be able to find a story on that, in the archives.

Pathe News demonstrates, though, that this is not a new problem, or limited to the Americas.

Although there's been a lot of announcements recently about the BBC's Creative Archive, I can't really see it being launched for at least a couple of years.

One of the major issues with distributing BBC aired programmes, via the Internet, is rights management. A lot of BBC produced programmes use material that is not actually owned by the BBC. It may have been commissioned from independant produces who retain some rights over it, or even purchased from other broadcasters. For example, the BBC archive has no World War II footage. That's because the BBC didn't start broadcasting until the 1950's. So every time you see a documentary on the BBC that has original WWII footage incorporated, that material has been purchased from a 3rd party (say Pathe for example). So clearing all material from all BBC shows is going to be a total headache! This may be in part why only a portion of the archive, and not the whole thing, is going to be initially available online.

The other issue is of course digitising all that content. It's a big ask and not going to happen overnight. The whole process of getting the tapes from the Windmill Road archive, selecting the content that you want to use, encoding that content (let's hope for MPEG4 but most likely to be MPEG2. Although Creative Archive doesn't have to be broadcast quality for personal use, only VHS quality, they'd be crazy not to encode at a higher quality so that content could be re-used in a digital format for other projects), cataloguing that content with all relevant keywords and metadata and then publishing the content. As for storage we're talking several (tens) terabytes at least.

I think building the website itself if going to be the easy bit!

Creative Archive is a project I'd love to work on as I think it's going to be quite exciting, but the shear scale is also quite enormous.

"Now you are here you can preview items from the entire 3500 hour British Pathe Film Archive which covers news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970.

"You can also license higher resolution copies of the same items for PowerPoint Presentations and Web Publishing, or simply buy a still from the item for private use.

"Requests for other rights or formats should be addressed to archive.sales@itn.co.uk Just type in what you are looking for above and within minutes you could own a little piece of history!"

Their FAQ sortof addresses the allowable uses of the previews:

"What am I allowed to do with my free Preview Files?

"They were made available on-line principally as an educational resource. We hope that they will stimulate an interest in modern history amongst younger people, and help older generations to understand the 20th century in a broader context.

"We encourage users to share Preview Files that they download with colleagues and friends around the world via e-mail. We would ask that this is not achieved by publishing Preview Files on-line. The only instance where we feel this might be appropriate is within a closed user group in an educational environment.

"Above all we would like users to enjoy discovering the past through our wonderful archive, and would hope that in return the images downloaded are not misused in any way."

Really specific there, one would think they could come up with a slightly more defined policy.

On the site that handles sales of British Pathe assets they specifically state that:

"The British Pathe archive is perhaps the world's most famous newsreel collection. Spanning the period 1896-1970, the collection comprises 3,500 hours and contains some of the most iconic images ever caught on camera. The entire archive has been remastered and fully digitised. It is now possible to view every second of this outstanding collection online through this web site and there is absolutely no charge for this facility.

"Unfortunately, British Pathe material is not available for license to companies based in North America or other NTSC territories."

Of course that is for the actual footage, no help with licensing for the still images though. A great archive and it will be an excellent resource for many. Hopefully they can clarify the use of the preview still images though.

British Pathe has digitized and made public a huge quantity of their newsreels online, starting with the 1890s and going to 1970. Watch nearly a century of riots, wars and cheezy human interest stories on pretty much every topic. Type in "computer" and see the history of computers, as told in short chunks with dramatic voiceover.