1991: The first webcam watched a coffee pot

Is there any coffee?

In 1991, researchers in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge kept walking down the hall only to find the coffee pot empty. So they pointed a camera at it. A tiny 128×128 black-and-white picture of the pot showed up on every computer on the office network, and nobody wasted a trip again.

In 1993, web browsers learned to show images, and the coffee pot went online. For the next eight years, people around the world checked on a coffee pot in England. When the camera was switched off in 2001, the pot itself sold on eBay for about $4,800.

The lesson isn't the camera. Nobody set out to invent the webcam. They fixed one small, daily annoyance with the simplest tool they had.

Three coffee-pot problems we see at local businesses

  1. "Are you open today?" If your phone rings with the same questions every day, your hours and answers aren't where customers look. Keep your Google Business Profile and website hours current, holidays included, and put your top three questions right on your homepage.
  2. No-shows and "I forgot." Missed appointments cost real money. Most online booking tools can send an automatic text or email reminder the day before, with a link to reschedule. Set it once and it runs every day without anyone remembering to do it.
  3. "Where's that file?" If the newest price sheet or form lives on one person's laptop or in an old email, everyone else is walking to an empty coffee pot. A shared folder in Microsoft 365 or Google Drive gives the whole team one place to look, from any device.

Find your coffee pot

Think about the question you answer over and over, or the trip you make that ends in "never mind." That's usually where a small, inexpensive fix pays off fastest.

More stories like this: Weird Tech History.

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