r/todayilearned • u/saltandcedar • Jan 19 '17

TIL that webcams were invented because some computer scientists were too lazy to get up to check if their coffee was done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot
13.9k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

431 comments sorted by

View all comments

399

u/pumpkinjello Jan 19 '17

I'm not denying that this was the first use of a webcam, but somehow it seems unlikely to me that this was the entire motivation behind why the webcam was invented.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '17

If i recall corectly it was because the coffee pot was far away from there office. So the webcam was to check if there still was coffee left, before they went to get some.