World's first Webcam coffee pot to be scrapped

A piece of Net history dies

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 7th March 2001 13:05 GMT

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The world famous coffee pot in the Trojan Room of the Computer Science Department of Cambridge University is to be chucked away as the department moves to new premises. The coffee pot holds a unique position in Internet history as it was the star of the first ever Webcam way back in 1993.

The story started back in 1991, when boffins in the computer department trained a digital camera on the pot (the only one in the whole seven-floor lab) and then wired up their computers with XCoffee software so they could see it from their desks - thereby saving themselves a trip if it was empty.

Then, in 1993, on a really wibbly wobbly Web they experimented with updating the image over the Internet and made history. Since then it has become a cult site with millions of viewers all over the world.

However, the department is moving to a new fancy £15 million building and so the ole pot is on the way out. We don't know what the coffee situation will be in the new building although we suspect it will have those god-awful coffee machines instead of pukka percolators.

No doubt, someone will set up a second coffee Webcam, but let's be honest, it won't be the same. And it would seem that word has definitely got out to the Web community because the pot cam has been unavailable all day. Get it while you can.

The official history of the pot is here and access to the Webcam here, although you'll be lucky to get onto it. ®