Twenty-five years ago today, the world’s first webcam was switched off. The 128x128 grayscale feed predated the World Wide Web and was originally set up to monitor a coffee pot at the University of Cambridge, allowing staff to check whether there was coffee before making the trip.
It all started with a top notch intranet and has gone downhill from there.
A little sad, tbh.
Doesn’t give a reason for the switch-off, also not on the cam webpage about the switch-off event:
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/qsf/switchoff.htmlIdk if a “webcam” can predate the web…
It predates the World Wide Web, which is a specific protocol.
No, http(s) is a protocol. The Web is not.
Fair, I was being imprecise. The world wide web is a specific network.
Methinks the point they were making was calling it a webcam before the web existed. It’s a point of pedantry I can respect.
There were webs before the world wide web. They just weren’t as wide as the world. And we’re probably just called networks.
