Overview

The Trojan Room Coffee Pot was developed at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory as a practical means of monitoring a communal coffee machine from elsewhere within the laboratory.

Beginning in 1991, a camera provided networked images of the coffee pot so that researchers could determine whether coffee was available without travelling to the room in which the machine was located.

In 1993, the image service was connected to the World Wide Web. The coffee pot could thereafter be observed by Internet users outside the laboratory and became widely recognized as the world’s first webcam.

The service remained operational until 2001, when the Computer Laboratory relocated from its former central Cambridge premises to the William Gates Building.

For catalogue purposes, the Bureau treats the Trojan Room Coffee Pot as a networked imaging service rather than as a website or as the physical coffee pot itself. The associated camera, coffee pot, software, images, and contemporary documentation constitute evidence of the historical Digital Object but are not individually equivalent to the service represented by this FWX record.

Preservation Note

The original networked imaging service is no longer operational. Its historical state is represented through surviving images, technical and institutional documentation, archived web material, and associated physical artifacts.

The Bureau therefore records the object as a documentary preservation case rather than as an active or reconstructed service.