The archive stores a plethora of electronic history including 85B web page images The document scanning operations of a massive public online digital archive based in San Francisco suffered $600,000 in fire damage Wednesday night.The Internet Archive said no one was hurt in the fire that broke out about 3:30 a.m. and caused damage to an electrical conduit and some “physical materials.” The cause of the fire is under investigation. The archive has a second facility in Richmond, Calif.“Most [of the physical materials] were in a separate locked room or in our physical archive and were not lost. Of those materials we did unfortunately lose, about half had already been digitized,” the Internet Archive wrote on its blog site. “We are working with our library partners now to assess.” The Internet Archive is an nonprofit project that has already digitized and stored hundreds of thousands of Internet images, video, audio and web pages for posterity. It has even archived 3,000 hours of television coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. One of the more popular archives with the organization is the Wayback Machine, a digital time capsule that stores more than 85 billion archived versions of Web pages dating back to 1996.The Internet Archive has been taking a snapshot of the World Wide Web every two months since 1997. The Internet Archive has requested donations to rebuild its facility as well as digitization services to help it continue its work. This article, Internet Archive suffers fire, reaffirming need for an Internet archive, was originally published at Computerworld.com.Lucas Mearian covers consumer data storage, consumerization of IT, mobile device management, renewable energy, telematics/car tech and entertainment tech for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com. Related content news analysis Apple confirms it will open up the iPad in Europe this fall The latest efforts to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act mean developers can offer to side load apps to both iPhones and iPads in the EU. Apple has also taken steps to improve what it offers to smaller and non-commercial developers in the By Jonny Evans May 02, 2024 6 mins iPad Apple Mobile Apps news Udacity offers laid-off US workers free access to its courses for 30 days Sign-ups will be available over the next 30 days By Lucas Mearian May 02, 2024 4 mins Technology Industry IT Jobs IT Skills opinion Why you’ll soon have a digital clone of your own AI isn’t going to replace you at work. You will. By Mike Elgan May 02, 2024 7 mins Augmented Reality Generative AI Virtual Reality news analysis Workers with these AI skills are getting cash premiums As AI deployments become more critical to digital transformation projects, organizations are struggling to find skilled workers to support the new technology, so they're paying premiums for prospective hires or current employees who obtain the n By Lucas Mearian May 01, 2024 7 mins Generative AI IT Jobs IT Skills Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe