Making a Homemade Webcam?

Space-Bot asks: "I remember back in high-school photography the simple and very basic homemade cameras that we made that surprisingly worked fairly well. Amazing how something so great started so basic. These days we have all these high tech gadgets that do it all so quickly you never really think about any of the work behind it. Well I would like to start to understand the modern digital cameras more and I figure what better way then to make a homemade webcam of some sort. Might some of you Slashdot guru's have some ideas or experience for my project?"