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The first live webcam broadcast was created in the early 1990s by computer scientists from the University of Cambridge to monitor the coffee maker in the Trojan Room. The webcam was connected to the lab’s local network via outdated technology and was shut down in 2001. The last coffee machine seen online was auctioned off on eBay.
Webcams are now an integral part of the internet, used for live streaming of everything from online games and sporting events to constant monitoring of baby zoo animals. However, the first live webcam broadcast was more mundane. It was created in the early 1990s by computer scientists from the University of Cambridge and monitored the only coffee maker in the seven-story Computer Laboratory located in the Trojan Room. Because the researchers worked in different labs on different floors, they wanted to be able to see if there was coffee in the percolator before going downstairs to get a cup. In 1993, the Trojan Room’s coffee pot webcam was put online for the world to see, earning it a revered status in the history of technology right there with Guglielmo Marconi’s first static radio broadcast.
Good to the last drop:
The camera was connected to the lab’s local network via a video capture card on an Acorn Archimedes computer. The software, dubbed XCoffee, used the X Window System protocol.
Outdated technology meant the webcam had to be shut down in 2001. Coverage of the arrest included front page mentions in major publications around the world.
The last of the four or five coffee machines seen online, a Krups model, was auctioned off on eBay for £3,350 (about $4,359 USD) to German news site Spiegel Online.
