Trojan room coffee pot
From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.
The world's first webcam was pointed at the Trojan room coffee pot at the computer science department of Cambridge University. The purpose was to avoid pointless trips to the coffee room by people working in other parts of the building by providing a live picture of the state of the coffee pot. The camera was installed on a local network in 1991 using a video capture card on an Acorn Archimedes. Using the X Window System protocol, Quentin Stafford-Fraser wrote the client and Paul Jardetzky wrote the server. The camera was connected to the Internet in 1993 by Daniel Gordon and Martyn Johnson. At 0954 UTC on August 22, 2001 the camera was finally switched off and the pot (actually the fourth or fifth seen on-line) was auctioned on eBay for £3350.
