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Making iStuff History:
The Original Webcam Taken Off Line &
FOR SALE ON EBAY!?!Internet afecionados, this is an opportunity not to be missed (except by those short of the $700+ cash needed to oust the current top bidder)! Touted as the "Internet era's equivalent of Guttenburg's bible (abcnews.go.com)" the world's first Webcam has been disconnected and PLACED FOR SALE ON EBAY after its decade-long, at-the-click-of-the-mouse appearance.
Hurry, AUCTION ENDS 11-Aug-01 13:39:29 BST!In today's world full of real-time images of everything from refridgerators and door bells to fish tanks and college girls' dorm rooms, what's the big deal about an on-line coffee pot?
As a Slashdot discussion board participant notes, "It's a "piece of Internet History that really should be saved... it's a part of the net's history and lore." A couple logs down, Josh Turiel describes the Coffee Cam as the "first thing that took advantage of the ability of a browser to handle mixed media in a manner suitable for virtually any platform." Prior to that, web pages were static, often only text with in-line graphics. As simplistic as it was, the Coffee Cam "was the direct precursor of a lot of things we now take for granted."
Throughout the discussion board, users cry out to have Internet phenomenons like the Coffee Cam documented and archived. In spite of their seemingly useless appearance, w00ly_mammoth comments that such sites "capture the spirit of the net far better than a dozen Gartner analysts thrown in a bin."
It's important to note that the Coffee Cam wasn't just about watching a the levels of coffee rise and fall at one frame per second, it was the fact that in 1993 (when most of us hadn't even heard of the Internet), anyone with a computer could log on and view real-time images from England across distance and time. It was the notion that people were experimenting with machines and technology, creating new programs and opening up new possibilities simply because they could.
History of the Original Web Cam:
Created in 1991 by a group of coffee-craving scientists frustrated by the prospect of descending a flight of stairs only to discover an empty pot, the Trojan Room Coffee Cam, known as XCoffee, captured images via a camcorder and delivered them via an internal network to the lab's computer monitors. A code written by the lazy, though highly creative scientists, ensured every trip to the pot would be a success!
It wasn't until 1993, at the onset of the World Wide Web, that the Coffee Cam went live.
An instant international curiosity, the $60 Coffee Pot has been viewed over 2.4 million times, has received numerous e-mails, and even had fans from around the world knocking on the lab door in hopes of catching a glimpse of the pot, real-time.
Why is XCoffee going off-line?
Later this year, the computer lab will be moving to a new building outside of Cambridge. Because the system is still running on its original hardware, it is unlikely any of the outdated equipment will be restored in the new location. Thus, the live Webcast will sadly come to an end.
Good 'till the Very Last Drop:
You can still catch a glimpse of the original XCoffee Cam through these exclusive Screen Shots documented only on iStuff.org!
Related Articles
XCoffee, the Trojan Room Coffee Machine Cam
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html
First star of the Internet retires by Joana Bale
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/ article/0,,2-95186,00.html
A Coffee Break: World's ‘First’ Webcam Going Into Retirement by Leela Jacinto
http://www.abcnews.go.com/ sections/world/DailyNews/ britain010307_coffee.htmlFirst Ever Webcam to Come Offline posted by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl? sid=01/03/07/ 1345210&mode=threadOther Webcam Sites:
IcePick.com, Someone is Watching Us
http://www.icepick.com/JenniCam, Life Online
http://www.jennicam.com/The Amazing Netscape Fish Cam
http://home.netscape.com/fishcam/
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