Margen
The first webcam in history didn't broadcast anything important: it pointed at a coffee pot, so the computer scientists at the University of Cambridge wouldn't climb the stairs for nothing.
The pot sat in a corridor of the computer lab, next to what was known as the Trojan Room. In 1991, two researchers tired of finding the jug empty aimed a camera at it and shared the picture on the internal network: three frames a minute, in black and white. In 1993, when the web as we know it was born, they connected it to the internet. It became the first webcam in the world.
Millions of people across the planet ended up checking on that coffee pot. When it was switched off for good in 2001, the jug was auctioned and a German outlet paid 3,350 pounds for it. The most absurd and endearing relic on the internet.
Source: BBC