The first webcam was not built to broadcast anything. It was built to solve a nuisance in a university computer science department, where the coffee pot sat in one room and most of the people wanting coffee sat in others. The walk was short and the disappointment was real. Their solution predates web browsers being able to show images at all.
A coffee pot in Cambridge, from 1991. The camera, called the , pointed at the Trojan Room coffee pot in the computer science department of Cambridge University. Computer scientists not working near it could see whether there was fresh coffee before making the trip. It ran on a local network using a video capture card on an computer, under the protocol.
In 1991 the first webcam, called the CoffeeCam, pointed at the Trojan Room coffee pot in the computer science department of Cambridge University. Its purpose was narrow and entirely practical. It showed computer scientists who were not working close to the pot when there was fresh coffee in it, so they could make the journey without being disappointed.
The original setup was local rather than global. The camera was installed on a local network in 1991 using a video capture card on an Acorn Archimedes computer. Employing the X Window System protocol, Quentin Stafford-Fraser wrote the client software and Paul Jardetzky wrote the server, which is the arrangement that lets a program on one machine draw on the screen of another.
The web caught up afterward. When web browsers gained the ability to display images in March 1993, it became clear this would be an easier way to make the picture available. Daniel Gordon and Martyn Johnson in November 1993. At that point the pot became visible to any internet user and grew into a popular landmark of the early web.
It ran for a decade in that role and was finally switched off in August 2001. Note what kind of record this is: a history reference entry that quotes the Wikipedia account for its technical description, so the detail here is secondhand rather than taken from departmental records.
wat. The first webcam watched a coffee pot so nobody would walk down the corridor for an empty one.
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The sequence is the interesting part. The camera existed for two years before web browsers could display images, so the first webcam predates the web being able to show what a webcam sees.
How do we know?
Jeremy Norman’s HistoryofInformation.com entry dates the installation and the shutdown, names those who wrote the client and server software and who connected it to the internet, and quotes the Wikipedia account of the technical setup.
What is still unknown
A history reference entry that quotes Wikipedia for its technical detail, which makes this a secondary account of a secondary account rather than a primary record.
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