Primary Source

The Claude Shannon project seeks to preserve the memory of the man whose mathematical theories lay the groundwork for the digital communication technology underlying the Internet. Shannon’s ideas, initially applied to telephone switching systems and early computing, proved tremendously useful in other scientific fields including genetics, encryption, and quantum physics. Shannon, dubbed the father of modern information theory, also applied his theoretical work to one of his favorite hobbies, juggling. His famous juggling machines illustrated his creativity, inveterate tinkering and great powers of invention. If Shannon or his work has influenced you either professionally or personally, please contribute your experiences and recollections to Echo’s permanent digital archive.

The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania and the public responses to them. Funded by a major grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and organized by the American Social History Project at the City University of New York Graduate Center and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the Digital Archive will contribute to the on-going effort by historians and archivists to record and preserve the record of 9/11 by: collecting first-hand accounts of the 9/11 attacks and the aftermath (especially voices currently under-represented on the web), collecting and archiving emails and digital images growing out of these events, organizing and annotating the most important web-based resources on the subject, and developing materials to contextualize and teach about the events. The Digital Archive will also use these events as a way of assessing how history is being recorded and preserved in the twenty-first century and as an opportunity to develop free software tools to help historians to do a better job of collecting, preserving, and writing history in the new century. Our goal is to create a permanent record of the events of September 11, 2001. In the process, we hope to foster some positive legacies of those terrible events by allowing people to tell their stories, making those stories available to a wide audience, providing historical context for understanding those events and their consequences, and helping historians and archivists improve their practices based on the lessons we learn from this project. The September 11 Digital Archive project formally ended in June, 2004, and although we continue to collect accounts submitted through the website, we are no longer updating the website.

"Where Were You When America Was Attacked?"
This site exists to gather the thoughts and emotions of everyday people to the events on and after September 11, 2001.

The Rosie the Riveter Memorial: Honoring American Women's Labor During WWII, is the first national monument to celebrate and interpret women's crucial contributions to the World War Two Home Front. It is located in Richmond, CA, in Rosie the Riveter Memorial Park at the site of the former Kaiser Shipyards, which were the largest and most productive of World War II.

The vision of Moving Here is to explore, record and illustrate why people came to England over the last 200 years, and what their experiences were and continue to be. The site mainly looks at the Caribbean, Irish, Jewish and South Asian communities but we are growing all the time!

This web site offers free access, for personal and educational use, to online versions of original material related to migration, including photographs, personal papers, government documents, maps and art objects, as well as a collection of sound recordings and video clips.

The Atomic Veterans History Project contains over 600 personal narratives about the military duties and memories of US Servicemen who witnessed these atomic and hydrogen weapons tests. Many veterans have sent photos, certificates and newspaper articles which we have added. There are over 500 photos from the recently declassified DOE atomic test films. Over 2500 files (stories, pictures and documents) are posted.

Atomic Veterans are invited to email their personal recollections. Information on researching your atomic military history is provided.

Over the past forty years the world of finance has changed dramatically, and one way to trace this evolution is through the technology that mediates the interaction between man and his money. The advent of Instinet, the creation of Nasdaq, and the popularity of SOES, E*Trade, and Real Tick mark distinct and important periods in the history of stock market culture.

The present-day evolutionary descendent of these technological developments is day trading – a phenomenon that has brought instant fortune and instant ruin to many by allowing individuals to control their own finances online in real time. Echo seeks to collect and permanently preserve narratives about day trading for the historical record. Please share your experiences of this important social, economic and technological movement.

This site tells the story of the Washington Metro, a 103-mile rapid transit system serving Washington, D.C., and the surrounding areas of Maryland and Virginia. Planning for Metro began in the 1950s, construction began in 1969, and the first segment opened for operation in 1976. Metro is one of the largest public-works projects ever built, and it is the second-busiest rail transit system in the United States.

Metro is the creation of thousands of planners, engineers, architects, and builders, and hundreds of thousands of neighbors and riders. Whatever your role, we hope you will share your own experiences as part of the Echo: Collecting History Online project.

My first exposure to computers was at age 6 (1963), as a subject in Dr. Patrick Suppes' accelerated mathematics experiment at Stanford. I was taken to a small room with what I now know was a CRT display and an intercom. I was asked to push some keys in response to some shapes on the screen. Afterwards, they showed me around a large room filled with big cabinets, some with lots of blinking white lights. They said it was a "computer" and its name was the "PDP-1". A tall thin man asked me to hit a key on a console to make a "decktape". I had absolutely no idea what a "DEC tape" was at the time, but when I hit the key, a small pair of reels BEGAN TO TURN!! It was a moment I would never forget.

The simple idea behind History Lived is to collect those memories, to record the true and complete story of America in the words of the everyday people that make America what it is.

The vast vision of History Lived is for it to transcend that simple idea and to become an unparalleled and unprecedented source for that American story. A place where we can all look to find the heart and soul of our nation. A place where the past reaches out to the present and helps unite us for the long journey into the future.