After crash, 1940 census website bolstered

The federal agency managing the new 1940 census website said Tuesday it increased capacity as an "interim" fix to prevent another crash like Monday's, which was caused by tens of millions of visitors looking up historic records.

"We think we've solved the problem," said Susan Cooper, spokeswoman for the National Archives and Records Administration. "Everybody should be able to get through." The website -- 1940census.archives.gov -- is free to the public.

She added in an email, "We recently deployed and tested some interim changes to the site, which we believe make it operational and largely functional, including for throughout the day [Wednesday]."

The fix involved adding more servers and increasing their capacity, Cooper said. However, she said, limitations remained. For instance, she said, "the major limitation is that census images will be served statically through the browser, rather than the more sophisticated Image Viewer."

She said that meant users can now view the 1940 census images by clicking on a thumbnail record on the site, and then clicking "download." The "Quick View" and "View Full Image" functions, though, aren't working properly, and she said they are to be removed by Wednesday morning.

Cooper said that, while the National Archives, which contracted with a private firm, archives.com, to host the site, expected much interest in the 1940 census records, the response was far greater than anticipated.

"We estimate . . . [Monday] we had over 50 million hits" to the website, Cooper said. "By . . . [Tuesday] morning alone, we've had over 33 million hits."

SEE PHOTOS25 photos of LI in the 1940s

People's personal responses to a decennial census are kept confidential for 72 years, though statistical data compiled from each decennial census are released publicly not long after a census is conducted. On Monday, the confidentiality period for the 1940 census ended.