user3431: The best free, downloadable chess database I've found is Kingbase (http://www.kingbase-chess.net). It only has games since 1990. I also have the Android Chessbase Online app, which also appears to only have relatively newer games. The only source I know of that has historical chess games is www.chessgames.com (but I don't think you can download the entire database into something like SCID). 
Why are these older games so hard to come by?

user26888: This is the link for SmallChess's Python repository for web crawling chess games I found it, just click here : https://github.com/pmerg/ExtractPGN

user825: I invite you do it yourself...

https://github.com/student-t/ExtractPGN

This is my Python repository for web crawling chess games. I use it to extract PGN chess games from Chessgames. This is an example of the games I extracted:

http://smallchess.com/Games

It's trivial to change the code such that you extract all games from chessgames (entire database) into a single PGN file. I believe you're a programmer, so that shouldn't be an issue for you.

3431: <p>The best free, downloadable chess database I've found is Kingbase (<a href="http://www.kingbase-chess.net" rel="noreferrer">http://www.kingbase-chess.net</a>). It only has games since 1990. I also have the Android Chessbase Online app, which also appears to only have relatively newer games. The only source I know of that has historical chess games is www.chessgames.com (but I don't think you can download the entire database into something like SCID). </p>

<p>Why are these older games so hard to come by?</p>
 26888: <p>This is the link for SmallChess's Python repository for web crawling chess games I found it, just click here : <a href="https://github.com/pmerg/ExtractPGN" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/pmerg/ExtractPGN</a></p>
 825: <p>I invite you do it yourself...</p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://github.com/student-t/ExtractPGN" rel="noreferrer">https://github.com/student-t/ExtractPGN</a></p>
</blockquote>

<p>This is my Python repository for web crawling chess games. I use it to extract PGN chess games from Chessgames. This is an example of the games I extracted:</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://smallchess.com/Games" rel="noreferrer">http://smallchess.com/Games</a></li>
</ul>

<p>It's trivial to change the code such that you extract all games from chessgames (<strong>entire database</strong>) into a single PGN file. I believe you're a programmer, so that shouldn't be an issue for you.</p>
