The oldest snapshot on Archive.org is from November 1996: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;19961112181513&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;19961112181513&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes...</a><p>Back then, they even had a low-bandwidth version of the site: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;19990117023050&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;info&#x2F;contents&#x2F;textpath.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;19990117023050&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes...</a><p>The website included various tutorials on how to use it, including a guide that covers the different browsers. None of the browsers listed are actively developed today: 
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;19961112182937&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;subscribe&#x2F;help&#x2F;browser.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;19961112182937&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes...</a><p>edit: A couple of other observations:<p>- How many other content websites have published for nearly this long and yet have their oldest articles remain on their original URLs? Most news sites can&#x27;t even do a redesign without breaking all of their old article URLs.<p>- I like this Spiderbites feature -- a sitemap of a year&#x27;s worth of articles (likely for webcrawlers at the time): <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spiderbites.nytimes.com&#x2F;free_1996&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spiderbites.nytimes.com&#x2F;free_1996&#x2F;</a>