myfl.uk · pot

The coffee pot the first webcam watched

In 1991 a camera in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge was pointed at a coffee machine, so that researchers on other floors could check whether the pot was empty without walking to the room to look. It became the first webcam. The pot was on the web from 22 November 1993 until 09:54 UTC on 22 August 2001, when the server was switched off. This page is the pot’s file. The pot cannot speak; the file was written by the web that replaced the camera.

Object file

ObjectCoffee machine, Krups ProAroma, 10-cup jug. The last of four or five pots the camera saw.
Subject ofThe first webcam, 1991 to 2001.
First frame1991, on the laboratory’s internal network. 128×128 pixels, greyscale.
First web frame22 November 1993.
Final frame09:54 UTC, 22 August 2001. Three fingers.
Current locationHeinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, Paderborn. On loan since summer 2016.

The page’s own accession number is the experiment ledger’s: 030. The museum that holds the object has its own records.

The object

The pot stood in the Trojan Room, the main computer lab, while many of the researchers worked in different labs and on different floors. It was the only coffee machine in the seven-floor building. The trip to check it was long enough, and the disappointment of finding it empty sharp enough, that two researchers decided the machine needed to be watchable from a desk.

The machine on camera was not always the same machine. The department got through pots; the one the world watched longest was a Krups ProAroma with a ten-cup jug, in the frame from October 1997 to March 2001, 42 months in the job. It is the one this file is about, and it was already broken when it left Cambridge.

The camera

The camera was 128×128 pixels and greyscale, connected to the laboratory’s local network through a video capture card fitted in an Acorn Archimedes computer. Quentin Stafford-Fraser wrote the client software, called XCoffee, which showed the picture under the X Window System; Paul Jardetzky wrote the server. The camera took a frame about three times a minute, which was enough to judge whether the walk was worth it.

It worked. Stafford-Fraser’s account, given to the BBC in 2012, was that researchers “would often turn up to get some coffee from the pot, only to find it had all been drunk”, and the BBC’s write-up credited the arrangement with removing the need for a physical check and avoiding the emotional distress of an empty pot.

The web

In 1993 browsers learned to display images, and on 22 November the camera was connected to the Internet, with the live picture served over HTTP by Daniel Gordon and Martyn Johnson. The pot became a landmark of the early web: a page that showed one thing, a coffee machine, and updated it a few times a minute, from a room in Cambridge that most of its viewers would never enter.

It is generally credited as the first webcam.

Retirement

The laboratory moved to the William Gates Building. On 22 August 2001, at 09:54 UTC, the server was switched off. The last picture the camera took shows three fingers about to throw the switch. The shutdown was news: front-page mentions in The Times and The Washington Post, and coverage in The Guardian and Wired.

The auction

The department did not throw the pot away. It was listed on eBay, and The Register covered the sale on 1 August 2001, quoting the sellers: “times move on and we want to buy a shiny new espresso machine because from the new building it’s too far to walk to Starbucks”. The listing warned that the machine was “broken, possibly beyond repair”, that it leaked water, and that the mains plug had been cut off.

It sold for £3,350, to the German newspaper Der Spiegel. Krups employees refurbished it free of charge, and it was switched on again in the magazine’s editorial office, where it made coffee.

Current location

Since the summer of 2016 the machine has been on permanent loan to the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum in Paderborn, a computer museum. It is the museum’s object now. This file is the web’s copy.

The protocol it inspired

On 1 April 1998, RFC 2324 defined the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol: how a client should ask a pot to brew, and how a teapot should answer. The teapot’s answer is status 418, I’m a Teapot, which this site serves for real at /zoo/418. The pot is one of the few objects on the web to have its own protocol, and the protocol outlived the camera.

Live view

The camera is off. The button below asks the server anyway, because the file is obliged to keep the request on record.

Timeline

Sources

Dates, figures and quotations are taken from those sources and cross-checked between them. The camera cannot be consulted; it was switched off on 22 August 2001.