How smart is AI (Artificial Intelligence)? Well, I can tell you that AI for newspaper database is programmed in the United States to read English.
Recently I used one of them to find newspapers for Eastern Pennsylvania from the 1800's. The search brought up the surname I wanted and, excitedly, I wanted to have these translated. I located a person who said she was a whiz at reading Old German and well, we failed.
I tried downloading but the original size of the newspaper had been digitalized and it would not print out on 9 X 11 paper. Then, I tried sending links via the provided send to e-mail but that didn't work. Heroically, my contact went to another newspaper database and brought up the same newspapers with the surname. However she said she thought basically it was gibberish.
But what might you find? Well, a newspaper can provide announcements of births, marriages, deaths (obituaries), and some newsy stories. Some will list who is fighting in a war, who just got elected, who is playing on what team, who graduated high school, and who got citizenship.
But if AI readers are not a problem there's this. Some of those old type-set newspapers ran out of letters - usually vowels - so you may just have to try a number of mispellings to bring up the people you're curious about.
Worth a try!
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