Read America’s old newspapers with Claude
Time Machine News connects Claude to Chronicling America, the Library of Congress archive of more than 20 million digitized newspaper pages from the 1700s to 1963. Ask about a day, a town, or an event, and Claude reads the pages printed at the time.
Free to use. No account or API key needed.
Add it to Claude
Works on claude.ai, Claude Desktop, and the mobile apps once it’s added. On Team and Enterprise plans, an owner may need to add it for your organization first.
- Copy the connector link above.
- In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors.
- Choose Add custom connector, name it Time Machine News, paste the link, and select Add.
- In a chat, open the tools menu below the message box and turn on Time Machine News.
Things to ask
Claude searches the archive, opens the pages, and quotes what was printed, with links back to each scan.
- What did Kansas newspapers report the week the Titanic sank?
- Summarize the front pages from November 11, 1918.
- How did Chicago papers cover the flu in October 1918?
- Read me the front page of the New-York Tribune from April 16, 1912.
- Which Montana newspapers are in the archive?
What Claude can do with it
- Search page text
- Finds words or phrases on scanned pages, filtered by date, state, or newspaper.
- See a day’s front pages
- Lists the front pages printed on any date, with their top headlines.
- Read a full page
- Pulls the transcribed text of a page, a citation, and links to the scan and PDF.
- Find newspapers
- Looks up papers by name, state, or city, with their years in print.
Good to know
- Page text was machine-read from old microfilm, so expect typos and garbled words. Check the scan before quoting.
- The archive ends in 1963, and most pages are from 1836 to 1922.
- A new search can take up to a minute; repeat searches are instant. The Library of Congress allows only a few lookups per minute, shared by everyone using this connector, so if Claude says it’s busy, wait a minute and ask again.