The press release naturally doesn't mention it, but I'd guess this was done at least in part because the release of the back issues for free public access became a <i>fait accompli</i> with: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709</a><p>People have been pressuring them for years to make these open-access, arguing that a non-profit society dedicated to spreading public knowledge ought to at least make the very old historical articles freely available to the general public.
Benjamin Franklin's 1752 paper on experimenting with electricity from thunderstorms, collected in a Leyden jar, is not to be missed.<p><a href="http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/47/565.full.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/47/565.full.p...</a><p>After edit:<p>To answer a question raised by another HN user, the Wikipedia article on the medial s character in older printed English-language books<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s</a><p>is helpful about the history of printing that character.
I cannot adequately express how awesome having access to this information is to me. When I was younger I would read one biography from <a href="http://www.gap-system.org/~history/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gap-system.org/~history/</a> before going to bed. It is nothing short of amazing to be able to get a projection, a snapshot of the workings of the great minds of centuries past. To see them struggle and then brilliantly succeed in explaining concepts that were at the edge of knowledge, that are still non-trivial and have their work remain timeless by continuing to stand head and shoulders above modern treatments of the same subject is remarkable.<p>I did a search on a bunch of people - Hamilton, Euler, George Green, Bernoulli, Euler, Gauss, Clifford, Boole and more. As is to be expected not every one is there. The most interesting essays my short search found were:<p>A Mathematical Theory of Magnetism by William Thomson <a href="http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/141/243.full.pdf+html?sid=fe65c826-aad8-409c-89d5-cd8378f605c6" rel="nofollow">http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/141/243.full....</a><p>and An Essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances by Thomas Bayes. <a href="http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/53/370.full.pdf+html?sid=5a73db2e-6635-4240-a252-e54cc481c83f" rel="nofollow">http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/53/370.full.p...</a>
Anyone knows why most of the "s" characters have become "f"? eg: beft, fucceeded etc.<p>Interestingly, nothing else seems to be wrong (at least I didn't spot anything else). And it's not even consistent, eg: crofs (instead of cross, so only one 's' became 'f' here).
You got to love some of these papers.<p>Account of an Elephant's Tusk, in which the Iron Head of a Spear was found imbedded. By Mr. Charles Combe, of Exeter College, Oxford, 1801.<p>Coming up with research topics was always an art!
These are gold!<p>Obligatory Isaac Newton search reveals his biting answer to "some considerations upon his doctrine of light and colors": <a href="http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/81-91/5084.full.pdf+html?sid=0bd4bec0-7c12-4aa2-aa18-88ee41085e43" rel="nofollow">http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/81-91/5084....</a> (note spelling of "color"). The initial phrase sets the tone: "Sir, I have already told you ..."<p>Too bad scientific papers have lost this rhetorical flavor.