This is another of those time
waster consuming websites: The Royal Society has celebrated its 350th year by putting online a selection of its most eye-catching research papers.
The new
website on which the papers are offered, dubbed
Trailblazing, also includes a timeline of historical events to which the publications are pegged.
The online papers are taken from the Society's journal,
Philosophical Transactions, the oldest continuously published scientific periodical in the world.
Royal Society
An example would be Benjamin Franklin's Kite Flying Electricity experiments. These documents are available as a PDF download (free AFAIK).