About us

ADDING A NEW DIMENSION TO THE PAST

The Time Machine project joins Europe’s rich past with the future of digital breakthroughs, creating a living resource that allows you to travel not only through space, but through time. Time Machine builds a large scale simulator mapping 2000 years of European History, transforming kilometres of archives and large collections from museums into a digital information system. These Big Data of the Past are common resources for the future that will have a huge cultural, economical and societal impact. Researchers from all over the world are now joining forces to bring the past back in one of the most ambitious project ever on European culture and identity.

Big Data of the Past

Time Machine aims to develop the Big Data of the Past, creating a huge distributed digital information system mapping the European social, cultural and geographical evolution across times. This large-scale digitisation and computing infrastructure will enable Europe to turn its long history, as well as its multilingualism and interculturalism, into a living social and economic resource.

Pushing frontiers

By pushing the frontiers of scientific research in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), Time Machine will strongly impact key sectors of European economy: ICT software, especially Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) applications; the creative industries; and tourism. Moreover, it will offer new perspectives in urban planning, land management and developing smart cities.

Time Machine will have strong positive long-term effects on European cohesion, economy and society, with concrete contributions to promoting critical thinking at all levels of decision making, to strengthening the feeling of European identity, as well as to boosting scientific and technological competitiveness, entrepreneurship and employment in knowledge-intensive and creative sectors across the European Union.