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Technology

'World's Oldest Webcam' To Be Switched Off (bbc.com) 41

Posted by BeauHD from the quarter-of-a-century dept.
The world's oldest continuously working webcam is being switched off after 25 years. The BBC reports: The Fogcam was set up in 1994 to watch how the weather changed on the San Francisco State University campus. has broadcast almost continuously since then barring regular maintenance and the occasional need for it to be re-sited to maintain its view. Its creators said it was being shut down because there were now no good places to put the webcam. Jeff Schwartz, who with Dan Wong set up the webcam, said it would go offline on 30 August. "We felt it was time to let it go," Mr Schwartz told the SFGate newspaper, adding that it was getting harder to find secure locations to put the camera so it had a good view of Holloway Avenue.

Mr Schwartz said he was inspired to set up the camera by what is believed to be the first-ever live webcam which was set up at Cambridge University in 1993 to watch a communal coffee pot.
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'World's Oldest Webcam' To Be Switched Off

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  • I would have thought that was older.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Cederic ( 9623 )

      Webcams weren't going to happen before the web, and the first instances of the web were still trying to work out this whole text thing.

      At the time pictures of any sort were rare, server side code providing variable responses to different requests only starting to happen and digital cameras themselves very uncommon.

      So 1993 for the first one isn't a surprise at all. The surprise was when I heard about it in 1993.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cito ( 1725214 )

        I had a website in 1995 and i used photoshop 3 or 4 to make some banners and buttons, for a few images I bought a twain black and white serial port hand scanner but never could get it to work (was supposed to place it on photo, push button and slowly slide it down manually which it had a little wheel underneath it slid on and release button when done. But either an irq issue or being broke I never got it to work). So to get my images on my website and being a college student I noticed my Dialup ISP website

        • To be honest, there are lots of places noting that the Trojan coffee pot was the first webcam, but I suspect there were some other things that were earlier and still on the web. There was no central authority keeping track of what happened on the web, the most you had was discussions on Usenet about URLs that seemed cool But there were a lot of things happening all at once all over the place, and it would not be surprising if some university had a webcam that only one departmental lab knew about (ie, for p

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            To be honest, there are lots of places noting that the Trojan coffee pot was the first webcam, but I suspect there were some other things that were earlier and still on the web. There was no central authority keeping track of what happened on the web, the most you had was discussions on Usenet about URLs that seemed cool But there were a lot of things happening all at once all over the place, and it would not be surprising if some university had a webcam that only one departmental lab knew about (ie, for pr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )

        The web was pretty much in its infancy back then. I mean gopher was still around. What was the browser? I don’t remember seeing mosaic until around 94 or so.

        • The first browser I used had ability to get to Gopher and Ftp as well, and I liked it for having more convenient access to Gopher than the previous client I used.

      • There were internet cameras before the web though, they just weren't "webcams". And web cams certainly were around before thie Fogcam, as even mentioned in the article. The coffee pot mentioned was not initially on the "web" and this only became a "web cam" once the web existed and a link was made to the existing server. I vaguely remember other sorts of things in 90/91.

        The "web" wasn't so revolutionary at first, it was initially yet another client-server protocol, it only caught fire and took off because

      • Lol. The site was a joke. It was just a pix.

  • Life is cruel.
    There should be some system for heritage preservation orders on these historic sites.

    • So, imagine *you* started watchmytrashcan.com in 1993. You kept it running mostly out of laziness, and because it was essentially free to run.

      26 years later, for whatever reason, you decide you don't want to maintain it any longer. You decide to shut down the site.

      But, some @$$-hat decides your silly website is now a culturally significant item, and *must* be preserved. You are issued a court order to maintain the site, even though the burden of expense is entirely upon you. In

      • Yeah, some dick declared that we should preserve the typewriter font, and just look at how that's turned out.

      • That will teach you for creating something culturally significant. Better to keep quiet and not attract attention.

      • >...you are issued a court order to maintain the site,...

        Who said anything about courts or who would maintain it? You're doing some major leaps here.

        The idea is that there ought to be some kind of Internet Archive to preserve the more notable web sites before they go offline.
        Perhaps there's an Archive.org inazation of some type that might do that kind of thing.
         

      • That happens to buildings all the time.

    • If there wasn't a Jennicam comment I was going to make one.

  • I would have thought that the first Webcam would have something to do with porn.

    I guess I am viewing the wrong sites. All I can find is Hentai and Swedish Spanking Schoolgirls.

    I haven't seen anything with Fog and Coffee.

    • It's in there with the hot coffee mod. Just keep looking.

    • It's the longest *still running*.

      Yes, porn was probably one of the early adopters of the tech.
      But by now, these porn pioneers have probably moved onto the next thing to early-adopt...

      {looks quickly upon the "popular bullshit buzzword bingo"} ...huh, VR porn, probably ? on the blockchain?

      • You can watch camgirls with a VR headset and pay them with cryptocurrency...so that's a bingo?

      • Most of those cams don't broadcast constantly, either.

        I'd bet there's quite a few more old cams to go before the oldest constantly broadcasting webcam is pornographic. But if I'm going to be wrong about something, it's probably this. :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Etcetera ( 14711 )

      I would have thought that the first Webcam would have something to do with porn.

      Though it wouldn't be surprising, remember that the Internet before NSF-realignment in '95 was almost exclusively an educational/military/commercial space, and using it (as opposed to a walled garden like Prodigy or CompuServe) for things like this was seen as iffy.

      Though not intentionally pushed as pr0n per se, JenniCam certainly counts as "voyeuristic", especially as the next logical step after things like The Real World but before "reality shows" boomed a few years later with Survivor. Clearly one of the

  • Why not keep it?

  • They are missing an opportunity here. Someone in the San Francisco area probably has a good vantage point. Put it on eBay or some auction service and allow others to bid on it. "Must be able to keep broadcasting versus cell network to reinstall and keep stream active" should be an obvious requirement.

    I'm sure there are many out there who'd like to hold the mantel of "longest streaming webcam." Could make some real bucks on it and preserve history!

  • I was looking to see what would become the oldest webcam site once Fogcam goes offline and I found The Amazing Fishcam site [fishcam.com]. They claim to be the second webcam on the web and the oldest camera site still in existence.

    I went over to Fogcam and their claim to be the oldest is based on the Wikipedia article on webcams. The reference in the Wikipedia article is an article in the Golden Gate XPress that is no longer online.

    On the Fogcam site they state to have come online in 1994 while The Amazing Fishcam site s

    • I went over to Fogcam and their claim to be the oldest is based on the Wikipedia article on webcams. The reference in the Wikipedia article is an article in the Golden Gate XPress that is no longer online.

      You done forgot about The Internet Archive thur.

      In 1994 [archive.org], SF State students Jeff Schwartz and Dan Wong constructed a device called a webcam, which captures snapshots every minute and broadcasts them in real time on the Internet. Today that webcam, nicknamed the SF State Fogcam, holds the distinction of being the worldâ(TM)s oldest webcam in operation.

      Sadly, even though the article (which dates from September 30, 2004) is not yet lost in the mists of time, it won't shed any additional light on your que

      • This site [waymarking.com] pegs it down to summer of 1994. But if the other reply to parent is to be believed, Fishcam began in July 1994. So it's still unresolved.

        I suppose in a few months it'll be a moot point. As long as Fishcam remains running, not only will it be the oldest webcam in operation, it will also indisputably be the longest running webcam ever.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by montulli ( 658308 )
      Seems unclear to me. I created the fishcam and I can affirm that the Fishcam came on in July of 1994 and I didn't know of any other live cameras at that time. The Fogcam does not list a month of the year in which they started. :lou
      • Just to clarify, I didn't know of any other cameras besides the Trojan room coffee machine at that time... :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by uncqual ( 836337 )

      The Fishcam history page [google.com] states:

      A short history of the Fishcam

      The Amazing Fishcam was started in late summer of 1994 by Lou Montulli, while working at Netscape. Netscape was building new web browsers and servers and the Fishcam served as an interesting hobby as well as a test vehicle for several features.

      The original Netscape tank was a 40 gallon oceanic, which was replaced a year later by a larger 90 gallon model. In 1996 a 350 gallon tank replaced the 90. The 350 gallon tank was moved several times but r

      • It was only a month or two of downtime. :) The previous office that the fish tank was in decided to move fairly suddenly, so it took me a bit to get another tank setup.

  • http://www.stevesantfarm.com/ [stevesantfarm.com] for 21 years, but it requires Java. Might as well kill it. :P

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