The Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive was launched by Arthur S. Banks in the fall of 1968 at the State University of New York at Binghamton. The archive was, in part, the outcome of an effort initiated some years earlier to assemble, in machine readable, longitudinal format, certain of the aggregate data resources of The Statesman's Yearbook, published since 1864. The archive has almost 200 variables and contains data for over 200 country units, with provision for entries from 1815 (excluding the two modern wartime periods, 1914-1918 and 1940-1945).