Google and the British Library have entered a strategic partnership to put 250,000 books online. The out of copyright texts date from 1700 to 1870 and contain some 40 million pages. Scholars and members of the public will soon have easy on-line access to the historical period that witnessed the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the invention of rail travel, the Crimean War, the battle of Trafalgar and the abolition of slavery.