This is one of the inventions which had a liquid necessity!
Ok now! Do not get drained!
Did you know that the web cam was invented just to see the level of Coffee pot in the break room!
The love of coffee for the average IT guy is well founded!
If you want some work to be done in your computer or some peripheral is not working (which is usually the stupid printer!); and you call the IT guy (or gal for that matter!); more often than not, he or she would have gone on a coffee break!
All you have to do next time is say that you have ordered some fresh coffee and he or she would come running!
Since I hardly drink anything except water, the craze or craving for coffee is beyond my comprehension but apparently that amazing web cam you use almost everyday was made for coffee!
Previously though the cams used to be the extra attachments and then some came with inbuilt ones which is the norm now! Apart from the IT guys there may be few who use them but once upon a time (which could be as less as five years back when I think about it!) it was a very basic and essential feature!
In if you think about it at the beginning of the nineties, the fledgling world wide web had no search engines, no social networking sites, and no webcam! And of course no internet bills!
The scientists credited with inventing the first webcam – thereby launching the revolution that would bring us video chats and live webcasts – stumbled upon the idea to solve a big physical problem!
Now now, IT dudes are not exactly physical! If they had to make a trip even for coffee, it better be worth it! So as Dr Quentin Stafford-Fraser observed, the problem for the scientists was that the coffee pot was stationed in the main computer lab, known as the Trojan room, and many of the researchers worked in different labs and on different floors!
“They would often turn up to get some coffee from the pot, only to find it had all been drunk,” Dr Stafford-Fraser remembers!
To solve the problem, he and another research scientist, Dr Paul Jardetzky, rigged up a camera to monitor the Trojan room coffee pot.
The camera would grab images three times a minute, and they wrote software that would allow researchers in the department to run the images from the camera on their internal computer network.
This removed the need for any physical effort to check the coffee pot, and avoided the emotional distress of turning up to find it empty!
However, it wasn’t until 22 November 1993 that the coffee pot cam made it onto the world wide web.
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!
Even now the old IT timers may remember the trojan coffee pot with nostalgia during their coffee or tea break!
Talking about old timers! We joined holi celebrations just like old times! And realised that you are never too old to play holi!
A rare colour sketch which represents that!
Hope you had a happy Holi!
Shubh ratri!
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