Trojan Room coffee pot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Trojan Room coffee pot was the inspiration for the world's first webcam. The coffee pot was located in the Trojan Room, within the old Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. The webcam was created to help people working in other parts of the building avoid pointless trips to the coffee room by providing a live 128x128 grayscale picture of the state of the coffee pot.^[1]^[2]

The camera was installed on a local network in 1991 using a video capture card on an Acorn Archimedes. Employing the X Window System protocol, Quentin Stafford-Fraser wrote the client software and Paul Jardetzky wrote the server. When web-browsers gained the ability to display images in March 1993, it was clear this would be an easier way to make the picture available. The camera was connected to the Internet in November 1993 by Daniel Gordon and Martyn Johnson. It therefore became visible to all Internet users and grew into a popular landmark of the early web.

The coffee pot computer being switched off

At 0954 UTC on 22 August 2001 the camera was finally switched off and the pot (actually the fourth or fifth seen on-line) was auctioned on eBay for £3,350 to Spiegel Online. Coverage of the event included front page mentions in The Times and The Washington Post, as well as articles in The Guardian and Wired.^[3]

[edit] Other mentions

On a list of "400 differences" in Visual Studio 2005, "difference #73" (first row, third column in image link section) shows 2 men watching a camera feed of a coffee maker (which is actually in the same room). This is supposed to show increased efficiency as demonstrated by not having to check the coffee maker's progress.^[4]
The coffee pot is spoofed in the video game Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. In one mission, the player can cause distraction by destroying a "coffee camera" in the kitchen.