From Newsgroup: alt.folklore.computers

The first time a camera was connected to a remote network was at the
University of Cambridge in 1991. The purpose was -- of all things --
to monitor the coffee pot in the common break area (it wasnrCOt even a
room), so team members looking for a cuppa could check the liquid
level before leaving their seats, to make sure they wouldnrCOt have to
wait for a refill <https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/webcams/the-worlds-first-webcam-was-switched-off-25-years-ago-today-128x128-grayscale-feed-predated-the-world-wide-web-to-monitor-a-cambridge-coffee-pot>.

The coffee monitoring system (aka rCLXCoffeerCY) stayed operational for 10 years.
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From Newsgroup: alt.folklore.computers

To: Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

The first time a camera was connected to a remote network was at the University of Cambridge in 1991. The purpose was -- of all things --
to monitor the coffee pot in the common break area (it wasnrCOt even a room), so team members looking for a cuppa could check the liquid
level before leaving their seats, to make sure they wouldnrCOt have to wait for a refill

Oh, weren't webcams all the rage back then -- I remember people with
those little ball Logitech webcams at their desk, uploading still
photos every couple of minutes.

I gotta admit, Logitech webcams and mice back then did seem
peak tech design. I'd trade my laser mouse for one of those old
Logitech 3 button mice, if I could only find a serial port!

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet






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From Newsgroup: alt.folklore.computers

On Thu, 27 Aug 2026 22:18:32 -0700, Kurt Weiske wrote:

On Mon, 24 Aug 2026 01:22:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

The first time a camera was connected to a remote network was at
the University of Cambridge in 1991.

Oh, weren't webcams all the rage back then ...

They were not called rCLwebcamsrCY back then, because you couldnrCOt (yet)
view live images over the web in 1991.

A little bit later, the first Internet-based videoconferencing tool
was introduced <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe>.

Then came QuickTime Conferencing <https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/QuickTime_Conferencing>.

None of this was web-based. That came later.
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From Newsgroup: alt.folklore.computers

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 27 Aug 2026 22:18:32 -0700, Kurt Weiske wrote:

On Mon, 24 Aug 2026 01:22:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

The first time a camera was connected to a remote network was at
the University of Cambridge in 1991.

Oh, weren't webcams all the rage back then ...

They were not called rCLwebcamsrCY back then, because you couldnrCOt (yet) view live images over the web in 1991.

The web barely existed in 1991.

There were 'video digitiser' cards, but they were mostly for what you'd call frame grabs today - they were too slow to capture live video, so you'd have
to use a VCR to freezeframe a tape and let the slow ADC in the card capture
it. They were too slow to grab live video, and there was nowhere to store
it anyway.

(at least in the personal computing space - broadcast TV had fancier
equipment)

The coffee pot was a good candidate as it was a) a non-changing live video frame, so you could capture it live - you didn't need to freezeframe it -
and b) monochrome. The cheaper digitisers were designed for mono composite video, as from analogue security cameras.

Theo
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From Newsgroup: alt.folklore.computers

Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote or quoted:

There were 'video digitiser' cards, but they were mostly for what you'd call >frame grabs today - they were too slow to capture live video, so you'd have >to use a VCR to freezeframe a tape and let the slow ADC in the card capture >it. They were too slow to grab live video, and there was nowhere to store
it anyway.

| The quote you mentioned perfectly describes the absolute nightmare of
| the early 1990s PC and Macintosh video capture market. For standard
| systems, it was 100% accurate: consumer cards were slow, hard drives
| were microscopic, and you had to rely on a VCR pause button to "grab"
| a single frame.
|
| However, the Commodore Amiga and the NewTek Video Toaster completely
| broke these rules. They did it by bypassing the computer's CPU and
| storage limitations altogether.
|
| The Amiga and the Video Toaster handled live video using a fundamen-
| tally different architecture.
|
| 1. How the Video Toaster Handled "Live Video"
|
| The quote assumes that "capturing video" meant converting a live
| analog signal into a digital file (.avi or .mp4) on a hard drive.
| In 1991, that was impossible for consumers.
|
| The NewTek Video Toaster (released in December 1990) did not do that.
| Instead of saving video to a disk, it acted as a real-time analog/
| digital hybrid broadcast switcher.
|
| The Hardware The Toaster was a massive expansion card for the Amiga
| 2000. It featured four BNC video inputs for live cameras or VCRs.
|
| Real-Time Processing When you fed a live camera feed into the
| Toaster, the card's onboard hardware processed that analog signal in
| real time. It didn't send the video frames to the Amiga's slow CPU or
| try to write them to a 40MB hard drive.
|
| The Output It blended the live video feeds, added Amiga-generated
| 24-bit graphics, and applied Hollywood-style digital transitions
| (wipes, dissolves, digital video effects) on the fly, pushing the live
| result straight back out to a television monitor or a master VCR tape.
|
| The Toaster could instantly capture a frame to its internal memory
| buffer if you hit the "Freeze" button, but its main job was processing
| live, full-framerate (30 frames/60 fields per second) television.
|
| 2. The Genlock Advantage
|
| The reason the Amiga became a television industry darling while IBM
| PCs were still struggling to display 16 colors was its custom chip
| architecture.
|
| The Amiga was designed from day one to easily synchronize its internal
| graphics clock with an external broadcast television signal (a process
| called Genlock or video overlay). You could take a live video feed,
| pass it through the Amiga, overlay computer-generated titles or anima-
| tions perfectly on top of it, and output it instantly. No rendering or
| storage required.
|
| Input Live video cameras or Tape deck A.
|
| Processor The Amiga + Video Toaster (doing real-time manipulation).
|
| Storage Tape deck B (recording the final stream in real time).
|
| Because tape-to-tape editing was the industry standard, nobody cared
| that the Amiga couldn't store the video files natively. It replaced a
| $100,000 television studio rack with a $5,000 desktop setup.
|
| When did actual digital storage arrive?
|
| It wasn't until 1994 that NewTek solved the storage issue by releasing
| the Video Toaster Flyer. The Flyer was a dedicated "Non-Linear Editing"
| (NLE) card that plugged into the Amiga alongside the Toaster. It used a
| proprietary, highly advanced compression script and required a massive
| array of expensive, specialized hard drives to finally store and play
| back broadcast-quality digital video from a disk.

Lines marked with "| " come from my editing, where I start by
writing prompts for the chatbot and then edit the generated
texts and format them for Usenet. The chatbots might make
mistakes and misrepresent or invent facts.


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From Newsgroup: alt.folklore.computers

On 29 Aug 2026 18:01:08 GMT, Stefan Ram spewed more AI slop:

| The NewTek Video Toaster (released in December 1990) did not do
| that. Instead of saving video to a disk, it acted as a real-time
| analog/ digital hybrid broadcast switcher.

Note also it was NTSC-only. There was no room in the Amiga hardware
memory map for the slightly larger frame buffer needed for PAL.

It was such a useful product, lots of customers in PAL-broadcast areas
bought it anyway.

| It wasn't until 1994 that NewTek solved the storage issue by
| releasing the Video Toaster Flyer.

Which basically sank without trace.

The chatbots might make mistakes and misrepresent or invent facts.

Which is why some have killfiled you already.
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