General purpose: * [Online Etymology Dictionary][3] * [Google Books][1], set date range and sort by date * [Google Ngram Viewer][2] Particularly for computing terms: * [Google Groups][4] for Usenet archives (1981 - present) * [DSpace@MIT][5] for the CSAIL archives (1959 - present) * IETF's [RFC][6] archive (1969 - present) * [PDP-10 software][7] archive (~1967 - ~1990), for old source code * [Tech Model Railroad Club dictionary][9], TMRC [1st & 2nd editions][10] (1959, 1960) * [The Jargon File][11] and [old][12] versions (1981 - 2003) * MIT's [The Tech][13] newspaper archives (1881 - present) * [Bitsavers][8]' Software and PDF Document Archive (misc. dates) [1]: http://books.google.com/ [2]: http://books.google.com/ngrams [3]: http://etymonline.com/ [4]: http://groups.google.com/ [5]: http://dspace.mit.edu/ [6]: http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html [7]: http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/cgi-bin/searchbyname [8]: http://www.bitsavers.org/ [9]: http://tmrc.mit.edu/dictionary.html [10]: http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/tmrc-dictionary-intro.html [11]: http://www.catb.org/jargon/ [12]: http://www.catb.org/jargon/oldversions/ [13]: http://tech.mit.edu/browse.html