In 1993 , the Internet was in its infancy ; a specialised tool in almost sub-beta form that only those involved in its research and development had any useful access to . As a technological era , the 1990s were dominated by self-contained appliances whose only external connections were either to another device ( video recorder to television , for instance ) and to the power socket , without which it wouldn ’ t function at all . Most devices were completely solitary in their digital endeavours and none , bar the telephone , required a |
connection to any kind of external network and not a single device on the market connected to anything even remotely resembling the Internet .
However , in one forward thinking corner of the world there was something quite remarkable happening , although nobody involved it its execution would have agreed to that accolade ; to them , it was just a means to an end .
If you ’ d spent some time in the Computer Science department at Cambridge University in the early 90s and fancied a cup of coffee , you would have noticed a camera hooked up to a local area network ( LAN ) and pointing directly at the only coffee pot in the building . You ’ d probably have asked about what on earth the cream of the UK ’ s technical crop were doing filming a coffee pot . Then , somebody like Paul Jardetzky , who wrote the program for the coffee pot camera , would have explained that it was a simple and practical way for anybody to see the pot from anywhere
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‘ In one forward thinking corner of the world there was something quite remarkable happening ’ |
in the building , thus negating the need for wasted trips across the grounds only to be met with an empty coffee pot .
So , take the necessity for caffeine – the fuel for many eureka moments – some slightly lazy Cambridge research fellows and some state-of-the-art equipment hanging around , and you have a recipe for something game changing – even though it wasn ’ t considered to be at the time by those who had developed it .
The Trojan Room coffee cam soldiered on with its single , relatively unremarkable duty of letting those logged on users know if there was coffee in the pot . In fact , it carried on with its coffee over-watch until it was finally disconnected on 22nd August 2001 . Some years after the first webcams found their way into the homes of tech savvy customers ; Most of them unaware of the technology ’ s humble grandparent . Only since it was disconnected has the Trojan Room Coffee Cam become something of a networking legend .
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50 | February 2017 |