The world’s first webcam monitored a coffee pot at Cambridge University’s computer laboratory.
Researchers connected the camera in 1991 so staff could check whether coffee was available without walking to the Trojan Room. The system sent a grayscale image across the laboratory’s internal network, making it an early example of a networked camera.
The camera became notable beyond Cambridge when the image was placed on the World Wide Web in 1993. This helped make it one of the web’s earliest live images and gave the coffee pot an unexpected place in Internet history.
The camera was switched off in 2001 when the laboratory moved. People sometimes call it the first webcam, although earlier closed-circuit and experimental networked cameras existed; its distinction is its pioneering public, web-accessible role.