The Trojan Room coffee pot was a

coffee machine A coffeemaker, coffee maker or coffee machine is a cooking appliance used to brew coffee. While there are many different types of coffeemakers the two most common brewing principles use gravity or pressure to move hot water through coffee gr ...

located in the

Computer Laboratory A computer lab is a space where computer services are provided to a defined community. These are typically public libraries and academic institutions. Generally, users must follow a certain user policy to retain access to the computers. This us ...

of the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, England. Created in 1991 by

Quentin Stafford-Fraser James Quentin Stafford-Fraser is a computer scientist and entrepreneur based in Cambridge, England. He was one of the team that created the first webcam, the Trojan room coffee pot. Quentin pointed a camera at the coffee pot and wrote the XCoff ...

and Paul Jardetzky, it was migrated from their laboratory network to the web in 1993 becoming the world's first

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripheral d ...

. To save people working in the building the disappointment of finding the coffee machine empty after making the trip to the room, a camera was set up providing a live picture of the coffee pot to all desktop computers on the office network. After the camera was connected to the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

a few years later, the coffee pot gained international notoriety as a feature of the fledgling

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

, until it was retired in 2001.

Development

The 128×128 px

greyscale In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a grayscale image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample representing only an ''amount'' of light; that is, it carries only intensity information. Graysca ...

camera was connected to the laboratory's

local network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

through a

video capture card Video capture is the process of converting an analog video signal—such as that produced by a video camera, DVD player, or television tuner—to digital video and sending it to local storage or to external circuitry. The resulting digital data a ...

fitted on an

Acorn Archimedes Acorn Archimedes is a family of personal computers designed by Acorn Computers of Cambridge, Cambridge, England. The systems are based on Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and the proprietary operating systems Arthur and RISC OS. The fi ...

computer. Researcher

wrote the

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

software, dubbed XCoffee and employing the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

protocol, while his colleague Paul Jardetzky wrote the server program. In 1993,

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

s gained the ability to display images, and it soon became clear that this would be an easier way to make the picture available to users. The camera was connected to the Internet and the live picture became available via

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...

in November of the same year, by computer scientists Daniel Gordon and Martyn Johnson. It therefore became visible worldwide and grew into a popular landmark of the early web.

Retirement and legacy

Following the laboratory's move to its current premises, the camera was eventually switched off, at 09:54 UTC on 22 August 2001. Coverage of the shutdown included front-page mentions in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' and ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', as well as articles in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' and ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

''. The last of the four or five coffee machines seen online, a

Krups Krups is a German kitchen appliance manufacturer. It is part of the Groupe SEB. It is named after its founder, Robert Krups. Wednesday, 02 December 2020 The company produces a large variety of household appliances such as coffee makers, toa ...

, was auctioned on

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

for £3,350 to the German news website ''

Spiegel Online ''Der Spiegel (online)'' is a German news website. Before the renaming in January 2020, the website's name was ''Spiegel Online'' (short ''SPON''). It was founded in 1994 as the online offshoot of the German news magazine, ''Der Spiegel'', wit ...

''. The pot was later refurbished

pro bono ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...

by Krups employees, and was switched on again in the magazine's editorial office. Since the summer of 2016, the coffee maker is on permanent loan to the

Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum The Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (HNF) in Paderborn, Germany, is the largest computer museum in the world (as of 2018). It is named after the Paderborn computer pioneer and entrepreneur Heinz Nixdorf. History In 1977, Heinz Nixdorf received numero ...

Paderborn Paderborn (; Westphalian: ''Patterbuorn'', also ''Paterboärn'') is a city in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the Paderborn district. The name of the city derives from the river Pader and ''Born'', an old German term for t ...

. Spoofs of the Trojan Room coffee machine ranged from the

Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP) is a facetious communication protocol for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots. It is specified in , published on 1 April 1998 as an April Fools' Day RFC, as part of an April Foo ...

, a 1998 April Fools' Day specification for a communication protocol, to the 2002 video game '' Hitman 2: Silent Assassin'', in which the player can destroy a "coffee camera" in a kitchen as a distraction. The coffee pot was also mentioned in the

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

drama ''

The Archers ''The Archers'' is a BBC radio drama on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural settin ...

'' on 24 February 2005. In the first episode of the fourth season of AMC's '' Halt and Catch Fire'', the coffee pot is shown to depict the first webcam showing up on the emerging World Wide Web.

References

External links

Trojan Room Coffee Machine
original website an

timeline
Internet archive of the site

*
Heinz Nixdorf Museum Paderborn - CoffeeCam Live View

YouTube Computerphile Interview with Quentin Stafford-Fraser

YouTube - The Centre for Computing History interview with Quentin Stafford-Fraser
{{Portal bar, Coffee, 1990s Internet properties established in 1991 Internet properties disestablished in 2001 British websites Cooking appliances Defunct websites History of Cambridge Internet culture University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory 1991 establishments in England 2001 disestablishments in England

Development

Retirement and legacy

References

Further reading

External links