1940s Time Machine

[dragonfly]

Ancestry.com has just unveiled a fun little toy based on the recently-released 1940 U.S. census data. You put in some basic information and they give you a tour of what your life might have been like in 1940. It is a good little context refresher.

http://www.ancestry.com/timemachine

There's no need to have an ancestry.com account. They ask for your name (the graphics insert your name into things in the tour, to personalize it) and they do ask for an email address. I can't swear to what they will do with that email address, but so far I have not found them to be evil, just commercial. Anyway, they also ask you for the name of an ancestor who might have been alive in 1940. At first that put me off, because I was trying to set up Steve Rogers, but it turns out all they do is, at the end, offer to search the 1940 census for your ancestor for you. ::shrug:: So just put in anything. It really is kind of fun.

http://www.ancestry.com/timemachine

Hmm, maybe an appropriate tag would be context:daily life. Or context:civilian life, which was proposed in the tagging post.

EDIT March, 2013: They've taken the time machine down, so now the above links just take you to ancestry.com.

Comments

[derryderrydown]

My video was WRONG! Toothpaste was around in tubes at the time! I know, because my great-great-aunt's husband was the bloke who first thought of putting it in tubes!

[dragonfly]

Hee! Did he get rich and famous? *g*

[derryderrydown]

He did! And then he got involved in a court case to defend his patent on bridgework and lost all his money. Damn.