cross-posted from: https://lemmy.capebreton.social/post/327322
The Trojan Room coffee pot was a coffee machine located in the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, England. Created in 1991 by Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky, it was migrated from their laboratory network to the web in 1993 becoming the world’s first webcam.
To save people working in the building the disappointment of finding the coffee machine empty after making the trip to the room, a camera was set up providing a live picture of the coffee pot to all desktop computers on the office network. After the camera was connected to the Internet a few years later, the coffee pot gained international renown as a feature of the fledgling World Wide Web, until being retired in 2001.
It went offline on August 22nd, 2001
Now, yeah they would, but that would have required giving up the massive profits they were still making at the time just to become a less valuable company faster. Past shareholders don’t care about future shareholders after all.