I can’t match that. The UCSC library has the Times going back to the Civil War but I don’t think it goes all the way to 1812.
As with today’s paper there are at least 10 articles so you would use up the free ones inside a week.
At the Monterey library it costs 25 cents a page, so even a Sunday edition, at $5-$10, is cheaper than the pay-by-the-article method. It is not just the cost that keeps me going to the microfilm* though. I come across many good articles and photos and so on as I scroll through the reels. I would miss those if I was working from an index. I might try again at our local JC – Cabrillo College. In addition to the reels they subscribe to the Times archives on-line. I could get unlimited access by signing up for a class. I need to take continuing education anyway for my accounting license so that could be a bonus. If you can simulate paging through the newspaper day by day it could work. And I wouldn’t have the occasional problem of unreadable copy like I do with the reels. That can be a crap shoot.
*Not microfiche. When I started this project I remembered that microfiche is on the reel and microfilm is the rectangles that you view like microscope slides. Wrong. I recently googled the terms and discovered I had it backwards.
You just reminded me of something that takes me back into my own “Way Back Machine”.
My first professional job involving computers involved working at a bank as a data processor. I maintained a huge NCR 8595 Mainframe and did all the night processing for the bank. Involved in that was making and copying microfiche (the 3X4 squares). The original was made off a tape real I made on the mainframe and was a thick black piece of plastic. The copier would produce these lighter blue copies that I would distribute to those who needed them in the bank. One of the first things I learned was that if you closed the slide on the copier too hard the xenon bulb that flashed the original would detonate lake a grenade.