The Times has converted all of its 1964 issues into a digitized, searchable format. Each week, The Upshot will unearth an item from 50 years ago and put it in the light of today. “Panama Canal, at 50, Still Awes Engineers” appeared on Aug. 16 and can be seen in its original format on TimesMachine.

The Panama Canal opened to traffic 100 years ago on Aug. 15, 1914, and on its 50th anniversary The Times published a celebratory article extolling its history, size and importance. In the canal’s 1963 fiscal year, it said, 12,138 ships had passed through, paying $62.3 million ($479 million in today’s dollars) in tolls, of which $1.9 million ($14.6 million today) was handed over to the government of Panama.

Traffic through the canal in fiscal 2013 was actually slightly lower than in 1964, at 12,045 ships; that was also 6.4 percent lower than the traffic in 2012, a decline that the canal authority’s 2013 annual report attributed to continuing weakness in the world economy. (But even at the 2013 traffic level, the canal was operating fairly close to its capacity.)

Financially, however, the canal is doing much better, and especially for Panama: Toll revenue reached $1.8 billion, and just over half of that, $981 million, went to the Panamanian government.