Quite the dramatic title, right? The story of the Trojan Room coffee pot is every bit as interesting as you would imagine. Okay, no, the pot was not central in laying siege to Troy. But it was the subject of the world’s first webcam, which comfortably sat in the Trojan room at the University of Cambridge. 

In 1991, while hard at work on multiple floors across an array of labs, computer scientists at the University of Cambridge were united by a single problem. No, it wasn’t solving some complex programming issue or coding an algorithm to save the world from an existential threat. It was figuring out if there was any coffee left in their coffee pot, duh!

Faced with the taxing ordeal of walking a few steps to check if their vital supply of coffee was available or not, a cunning plan was devised. By simply connecting a frame-grabber to a camera and attaching it to a computer, the academics were able to see their beloved pot on their computer screens while they worked. The images were updated about three times a minute, analogous to a slow modern-day video stream. According to Dr Quentin Stafford-Fraser who helped construct the system, the software was “more useful than anything else I wrote while working on the networks” – showing just how far people will go to maintain a caffeine addiction.

However, in 1993 Dr Martyn Johnson made an even bigger breakthrough. Locked out of the internal network and therefore unable to utilize this vital piece of coffee-scanning technology, he decided to make the live images available on the world wide web. This made it the first webcam stream. Today, a simple broadcast of a coffee pot wouldn’t make it past a few viewers on Twitch, but back then it was revolutionary. Millions of people around the world tuned in to see this mundane spectacle. Dr Stafford-Fraser even recalls an email from Japan asking him to turn the lights on so that those in other time zones could catch a glimpse. Of course, with this new-found international stardom came endorsements… like that one time it was mentioned on The Archers, a BBC radio soap opera.

However, all good things must come to an end, and on the 22nd of August 2001 the camera was switched off forever. The masses were kept informed with media coverage from The Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and Wired, if you can believe it.

So, what’s the moral of the story? Well, I guess there isn’t one really. Honestly we just thought it was a fun little story about the first online stream using a computer camera. Which connects to HUE, of course! Why not stream your own exciting household items using the flexible HUE HD Pro camera, available now in the HUE shop?

References & Credits

How the world’s first webcam made a coffee pot famous (BBC News)
The Trojan Room Coffee Pot (Quentin Stafford- Fraser)

Blog image: “Trojan Room coffee pot xvcoffee” by Quentin Stafford-Fraser. License: CC BY-SA 3.0 (Creative Commons).

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