Google puts National Archives video online

A marching band begins to play. The United Newsreel logo, an eagle in a martial pose, flickers onto the black-and-white screen. Bold letters proclaim: “Nazi War Plants Blasted by R.A.F. in Night Raids.”

This is a World War II era newsreel, one of 100 historic videos retrieved from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and posted Friday on Google Video. The content represents the first fruits of a joint project aimed at putting as much of the National Archives’ video content as possible online.

In this first batch are dozens of newsreels, films on the early 1930s park service, and National Air and Space Administration documentaries on space travel. A must-see includes Orson Welles reading from H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” before discussing the likelihood of extraterrestrial life “beyond the petty surface of our own minute sphere.”

Google Video product manager Peter Chane said the company is working in stages to put as many as possible of the National Archives’ 114,000 film reels and 37,000 videos online.

Full story: ZDNet