The first webcam, per Cambridge, watched a coffee pot. It went on the web in 1993, was switched off in 2001, and the pot sold on eBay for 3,350 pounds.
The first webcam was not pointed at a city, a sunset or a person. It watched a coffee pot. Researchers at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory set it up so they could see whether the pot was full before walking to it.
The pot sat in the corridor outside the lab's Trojan Room. About 15 people shared that one filter coffee machine, and some had to climb several flights of stairs, often to find it empty.
How it started
- 1991: the group fixed a camera to a lab retort stand, pointed it at the pot and ran the wires under the floor to a spare computer with a video frame-grabber.
- A small program showed an icon-sized picture of the pot in the corner of everyone's screen. It updated about 3 times a minute, in greyscale. The lab's history notes that was fine, "because so was the coffee."
- The system took "a day or so" to build.
How it reached the web
- November 1993: the system was changed to answer web requests and connected to the World Wide Web. The lab's timeline says this is when "XCoffee is transformed into the first webcam."
- The web version grabbed one frame of the pot every second.
- Hundreds of thousands of people looked at it, the lab says, making it "undoubtedly the most famous" coffee pot in the world.
How it ended
- August 2001: the lab's longest-serving pot was auctioned on eBay to raise money for coffee in the lab's new building. It sold for 3,350 pounds.
- August 22, 2001: the camera was switched off, after nearly 8 years on the web (our math, from November 1993).
