Slashdot Mirror
First Ever Webcam to Come Offline
sidetrack writes: "According to an article in The Times, Cambridge University Computer Laboratory's famous coffee pot camera - allegedly the world's first web cam (indeed, it predated the web by a few years in its original form) is to be retired, when the department moves to a new building. I think I remember looking at this some time in '95 - a piece of internet history that really should be saved, IMHO ;-)." Bits and pieces
of history guys. It frightens me to realize that all this stuff
we thought was so cool just a few years ago is now part of the net's
history and lore. Tell your grandkids that you were there when...
Well, that seems like the point...
Would I sit at my desk today, staring at a picture of a coffee pot? No. Did I, in 1994 or 95, find myself really struck by the fact that a cheap little Mac was showing me (almost) real-time images from England? Yes, I did.
Was I, after watching the coffee pot for a while, happy to realize there were people all over the world who were interested in what you could do with these machines, and didn't care whether the end result was "important" or not? Absolutely!
Did I then spend too much time visiting the Web-enabled refrigerator, the site that let you display messages on an LED board, the Abductalizer, and Web cams in a wide variety of uninteresting places? Well...yes. And I'll admit, that part was a little pathetic.
Oh, well. I for one will be sorry to see the coffee pot go...
* * *
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It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
With the move to the new building, the CUCL will probably (finally) get to have their very own coffee pot within their department. Hence, when Mr. Coder gets thirsty (or needs a jolt to get the neurons moving), all he has to do is glance over his shoulder to the counter and see that yes, indeed, there is coffee to be had. No more checking up on the web to prevent a wasted trip to an empty pot. Simply put, there is no need for the CoffeeCam anymore. Plus, the CoffeeCam obviously requires occasional, perhaps even often, maintenance; time which could be better spent advancing "the cause" (whatever that may be).
Certainly, CUCL could place a new cam on this new coffe pot, but it wouldn't be the same. Why not? Because the purpose, the whole reason for its existence, will be a farce. It won't exist to ease the lives of coders, but to sate the curiosity of Internet hitchikers who have nothing better to do than waste the precious bandwidth of an already-taxed not-for-profit organization of higher education.
That said, CUCL should have a CoffeeCam history page, explaining what it was, why it was, and why it is no more. This for the sake of posterity and public record.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
One of the first Linux quickcams is still up and running (more or less) since 1994 and the page describes a good deal about how to do it.
I went to inspect "The Really Big Button That Doesn't Do Anything" only to find it does do something. It refreshes the page. Now they have to rename the site to "The Really Big Button That Does ONE Thing" or possibly "The Really Big Button That We Told People Did Nothing, But In Fact Does And Always Has Done Something"
Ctrl-Alt-F. It works with Netscape 4.0 and later, and Mozilla.
"First Ever Webcam" to Come Offline.
not
First Ever "Webcam To Come Offline."
Besides, I liked the original headline: "First Ever Webcam to Coming Offline." Heh. I think this whole "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" craziness might be having an unanticpated adverse effect on the already languishing grammar of the 'Net.
I, for one, will mourn the loss of the coffee cam, not for lack of other stupid things to look at on the Internet, but for its role as an innovator. Doing something not because it's particularly earth shattering or useful, but just because you can. Geek chic!
--- [DrPsycho] Coping with reality since 1975.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
I believe the webcams at MIT's TNS research group may have been first. I seem to remember viewing the TNS people remotely in 94, but you may want to double check on that. The TNS Technology Demonstrations page has been up for many many years.
I mean, setting up a camera on the communal coffee pot rocks; you don't have to drag your butt halfway across the building to just to find an empty coffee pot.
This could mean that coffee would never be made, though... If everyone can see that the coffee pot was empty, then no one would want to be the one to schlep down to the pot, start a new pot brewing and wait around for it to finish. Everyone would wait for everyone else to do it. All productive work would stop. Everyone would just watch the damn coffee pot...
Now, if you could get a more sophisticated cam, one that would snap a picture of the rotten bastard who took the last cup without starting a new pot... now that would be progress...
The first coffee port in the world to get slashdotted!
Ahh, but that was years ago. Funny, that's only about 7 years ago, but it still feels like an eternity (in internet time, at least).
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
This is such big news it was mentioned on the BBC's Breakfast News programme this morning!
Jeremy Bowen read out the URL so that people could see while it's still there, and nearly ran out of breath! How good it is that a legend like CoffeeCam (ahem) hasn't gone the way of the rest of the web, and will in fact reture without having registered a domain...
www.coffeecam.org anyone?
--
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
The Stanford CS department has had the "Prancing Pony Cooperative", a computer-controlled vending machine, for almost two decades. It's in the third floor lounge of Margret Jacks Hall now, although it once lived at the Power Lab, the original Stanford AI Lab site. It used to be directly connected to the SAIL DEC-20 mainframe, but when SAIL was retired, it was defunct for a while, and it's now connected to the UNIX box that replaced SAIL.
It's basically a payment system; if you have an account, you can buy things and charge them to your account. The machine has an early-model laptop attached to the front (replacing a Teletype KSR-35) for this purpose. Unfortunately, the vending machine doesn't have any sensors that provide user-useful info you could query via the net. It's one of those old turntable-and-doors type machines, where you push the button to rotate the turntable until something you want is behind a door, then pay. The machine doesn't know if it is full or empty.
You can type "finger pony@sail.stanford.edu" for some info, and users of that machine can check their account balances.
John Nagle
The Pony is long gone. No idea where it ended up. The famous SAIL system is long gone as well; today "sail.stanford.edu" is just the workgroup server for McCarthy's group at Stanford. But "finger pony@sail.stanford.edu" still returns
[sail.stanford.edu]
Login name: pony
In real life: Prancing Pony
Directory:
Last login Fri Aug 25, 1995 on ttypc from xenon.stanford.edu
No Plan.
Way back in the "good old days", I remember the first browser I ran (remember when there were dozens to choose from?), and I was looking for websites that seemed like they might be interesting. When I saw the Coffee Cam, the little lightbulb in my head finally went off - it was the first real application I had seen that used any of the web's potential. Sure, cameras had been networked before (as had that coffee pot), but the Coffee Cam was the first thing I saw that took advantage of the ability of a browser to handle mixed media in a manner suitable for virtually any platform. Before the cam, web pages were mostly just text with in-line graphics - there were no interactive or dynamic elements.
By itself, it didn't do much (I mean, it was just a refreshing picture of a coffee pot), but it was the direct precursor of a lot of things we now take for granted.
It was also arguably (along with the Fish Cam) the immediate ancestor of JenniCam, and all the other webcams out there. As for me, it encouraged me to give up HyperCard for HTML.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
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