TimeSearch - History & Homeschool Studies

TimeSearch is a search engine devised by Bamber Gascoigne and designed by Ian Henghes, who are fellow directors of the educational website HistoryWorld. It is an early example of the post-Google generation of online search tools, capable of being more finely tuned to the individual needs of the user.

In the case of TimeSearch the user will be anyone interested in history. This may sound restricting. But yesterday is history. After lunch, this morning is history. The raw material of TimeSearch is events of any kind, whenever they may have happened.

By delivering them in the form of timelines, the programme introduces the valuable element of chance discovery. In a conventional search engine you need to know roughly what you are looking for before you can type it into the Search panel. With TimeSearch you only need to say what areas or themes interest you, and at what period, before you discover what surprises history may deliver. A previously unknown event may turn out to be just what you were looking for. And it not only arrives with its own built-in search mechanism. It even lets you decide which site or sites you wish to search - for related information or images.

TimeSearch already has nearly 10,000 events in its timelines, and it is growing fast. This material is a spin-off from HistoryWorld, and the TimeSearch project - launched in 2007 - therefore derives ultimately from the origins of HistoryWorld a dozen years before. It is managed by the same team of five who have run HistoryWorld since its launch.