The World's First Webcam: Keeping an Eye on Coffee

Born out of necessity, scientists in the Computer Science Department's Trojan Room were tired of making the trek to an empty coffee pot. They set up a camera pointing at the pot, connected it to a frame grabber, and developed software to display 128x128 pixel grayscale images on their internal network. When the World Wide Web became public, they made the feed available globally, turning a simple lab hack into a global phenomenon and pioneering a new form of digital communication long before video conferencing became commonplace.