Webcam Coffeepot Served Up in Auction

Baldwin Louie — Mon, 13 Aug 2001 15:00:00 -0700

BERLIN – It's perhaps the most famous coffeepot in the world, and now it's likely one of the most expensive.

The machine, in the Trojan Room at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in the U.K., has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of Internet surfers via a frame grab posted on the Web. It's developed such a cult following that bidders on the eBay Web site pushed up the price of the pot to $4,767 in an online auction which ended Saturday. The winning bid was placed by the editors of German news magazine Spiegel Online.

The story began in the pre-Web days of 1991, when researchers working on ATM, or asynchronous transfer mode, networks pointed a digital camera at their coffeepot and wrote software enabling members of the lab's "coffee club" to view an image of the pot on their computer screens. That way they could save themselves long, late-night trips through the corridors for a caffeine infusion when the pot was empty. In a later version, the image was broadcast over the Web, and the popular XCoffee site, reputedly the first-ever Web cam, was born.

Now the lab is moving buildings, and the 10-cup Krups ProAroma – actually the latest of several machines which have served in the spot – is being retired.

"Times move on and we want to buy a shiny new espresso machine because from the new building it's too far to walk to Starbucks," the researchers wrote in their eBay offering.

"It's a wonderful piece of Internet history, and we'd like to save it and continue the tradition of the pot," said Spiegel Online Managing Editor Wolfgang B
chner. "We are now waiting to get it over here and then put it back on a Web cam."

The coffeepot will have pride of place in Spiegel Online's editorial offices in Hamburg, he said, and on the magazine's Web site – albeit with the logo of a corporate sponsor, which picked up the tab for the artifact.

It's not too late to get a last look at the original XCoffee site, though the pot itself is obscured by a hand-lettered sign reading "Sold."

But if the proud new owners are looking forward to fresh brew, they might be disappointed.

"We must warn you that the machine is broken, possibly beyond repair. It leaks water, and we've cut off the mains plug," wrote the academics.

Not a problem, said B
chner. "We'll probably find someone who is able to repair the thing."

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Webcam Coffeepot Served Up in Auction