Historic Newspapers Screensaver
The Historic Newspapers screensaver shows real pages from Chronicling America, the Library of Congress archive of digitised American newspapers, read key-less. These are historical documents and carry the attitudes and language of their time. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
How the Historic Newspapers screensaver works
The background pipeline reads this from the Library of Congress and saves a snapshot the saver loads.
Real pages from Chronicling America, the Library of Congress archive of digitised American newspapers, read key-less.
It refreshes on a schedule, so what you see stays current.
Colours can be changed in settings; nothing is stored beyond your own browser.
A worked example
Real pages from Chronicling America, the Library of Congress archive of digitised American newspapers, read key-less. These are historical documents and carry the attitudes and language of their time.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display.
- Run
automation/run.py locnewsto refresh the archive. - Press ESC to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real data?
- Yes — it comes from the Library of Congress and is refreshed on a schedule.
- Why does some of this language look dated?
- These are historical documents reproduced as published, so they carry the attitudes and language of their time. Nothing is edited or modernised.
- Why is this fetched by the pipeline?
- loc.gov advertises open CORS but its Cloudflare layer blocks real browser requests, so the fetch has to happen server-side.
- Is a key needed?
- No. This source is fully key-less.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.