Google has announced that, from now on, it will host LIFE Magazine’s photo archives. Over 10 million images dating as far back as the 1750s are being lifted off of dusty pages, etchings, negatives, slides and sketches and brought by Google in digital Technicolor.


A user can now search for specific topics such as Walt Disney or drive-in movie theaters. Each image will probably include additional details, such as information about the one who took it, location and date of the photo. Clicking on photos from the LIFE archive, a user will receive a full-screen, high resolution version of the photo. Furthermore, if a user really likes an image, it can buy a framed print.

In order to begin a “voyage through history”, all you have to do is search the LIFE photo archive or include “source: life” when searching Google Images to only search the LIFE archive. Time, which owns LIFE Magazine’s contents, will also house the archives and more on LIFE.com, when the site will be launched next year.

This move is another example of how Google is once again bringing offline content to the web, by digitizing more information (the company started scanning microfilm to digitize newspapers earlier this year) and making it easier for everyone to search and experience a moment in time.

This new service will make its official debut on Tuesday, with about 2 million photos. Google plans to scan all 10 million photos from Life’s library so they can be viewed on any computer with an Internet connection. As previously mentioned, users can buy a framed print of the photos, but they can also print it themselves, if they do not attempt to make money with it. The orders for the framed prints will be processed through Qoop.com.

LIFE’s archives include photos from the Civil War as well as some of the most memorable moments from the 20th century.