Trojan Room coffee machine

Possibly the most famous coffee pot in the world, being the very first object ever to be made the subject of an online camera. It lives in the corridor outside the Trojan Room, of the Computing Laboratory in Cambridge University.

The system was originally constructed by a group of research students, who were tired of walking up several flights of stairs only to discover that the coffee pot was empty. A small lamp is always left switched on, so you can see the coffee pot at night.

It's interesting to note that this coffee machine (and in fact, the camera setup) predates the web¹.

It started back in the dark days of 1991, when the World Wide Web was little more than a glint in CERN's eye

says the history of the coffee pot.

The pot of coffee can be found at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/xvcoffee as well as in the Trojan Room, Cambridge University (in real life), with a web page at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html.

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¹: Thanks yossarian!

Historical update:

During August 2001, the Computer Lab moved building - from New Museums Site in central Cambridge to a new home on the West Cambridge Campus. The move seemed a good time to cease supporting the antiquated hardware which maintained the coffee cam.

At the time, one of the early pots - A broken Krups ProAroma was auctioned on Ebay UK. The auction finally closed on August 11, 2001, the broken pot being sold for £3,350 ($5000?)! Obviously Internet nostalgia was worth something!

The buyer was a German online magazine (Der Spiegel Online), who plan to refurbish the pot and put it back online for all to see!