I'll bet you enjoy looking at webcam images as much as I do! There are billions of sights you can see from your phone or pc...eagles' nests...your kid's school yard...Times Square...the line for Thrasher's French Fries in Ocean City, MD...a beautiful sunset 1/2 way around the world..and you can see all this majesty for free! (as long as you pay your internet access bill.)
You won't be surprised to learn that it was some pioneering computer guys, Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky, who were working the Trojan Room, the computer lab at the University of Cambridge, who developed the first webcam.
It was 1991. Stafford-Fraser and Jardetzky were given the task (I refuse to say "they were tasked") of helping the other brilliant men and women in the lab find out if any coffee was available in the communal Mr Coffee. These were busy people! Walking to the coffee room, only to come back with an empty mug, was a colossal waste of time, so S-F and J rigged up a digital camera, pointed it at the drip-o-lator, and fed the live image to everyone's screen.
Eventually, the entire world wide web knew if there was coffee to be had, and the idea went world-wide.
Dag. Coffee lovers are serious about getting their Java jive!
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