The Oldest Live Stream Ever
Head to https://squarespace.com/nostalgianerd to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code NOSTALGIANERD ~ The Trojan Room Coffee pot story is interesting, firstly, because it’s a story about the first ever webcam. Secondly, because it’s about a coffee pot that has been with us since the dawn of the internet, and to this day, remains with us.
I thought it was such an interesting topic that I popped over to Germany to see it in the flesh, and then decided to interview the man responsible for bringing it to us in the first place.
I hope you enjoy it as much as my round trip to make it 😀
Huge thank you to Dr. Quentin Stafford-Fraser for taking part in this documentary.
Patreon users can watch the full interview with Quentin, along with vlogs of the museum and computer lab at https://www.patreon.com/nostalgianerd
You can read the web article version of this video, including references and links at https://www.nostalgianerd.com/the-longest-live-streamer-ever/
⌚Timings⌚
00:00-02:44 Introduction
02:44-08:49 Trojan Room Coffee Pot
08:49-09:26 SqSp
09:26-22:50 Trojan Room Coffee Pot
22:50-27:12 Der Spiegel Years
27:12-28:30 Heinz Nixdorf Years
28:30-29:27 Back to the lab
29:27-30:10 Credits
🔗Video Links🔗
David Attenborough Building: https://www.cambridgeconservation.org/about/the-david-attenborough-building/
Quentin’s Website: https://quentinsf.com/coffeepot/
Trojan Room Coffee Pot Timeline: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/qsf/timeline.html
Trojan Room Coffee Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/19971210230542/https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html
Coffee Machine Biography: https://web.archive.org/web/20050130093605/http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/qsf/coffee.html
Philip Watson’s MPEG Test: https://web.archive.org/web/20060220170752/http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pwatson/
Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2324
Der Spiegel Webcam: https://web.archive.org/web/20160624140129/http://www.spiegel.de/static/popup/coffeecam/cam1.html
Der Spiegel: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/trojan-room-coffee-machine-virtuelles-museum-fuer-den-ersten-star-des-internets-a-189302.html
Heinz Nixdorf Camera Blog: https://blog.hnf.de/der-kaffee-ist-fertig/
Heinz Nixdorf Live Camera: https://kaffee.hnf.de/mjpg/video.mjpg
Ken’s Freezer: https://web.archive.org/web/19980416100044/http://kens.com:80/freezercam.html
You disgust me: https://web.archive.org/web/19970611015821/www.dcs.qmw.ac.uk/~nickbk/web_camera/
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Some material in this video may be used under Fair Dealing / Fair Use. Where under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (UK: Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), allowance is made for purposes including parody, quotation, criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, education and research. Fair Dealing / Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
@sergeantqumbula4783
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
KAFFERUMMET💣
@wiltonribeiro3951
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
What a amazing history, thanks
@Giddzy
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
All this effort and the brits and the yanks still have no idea what decent coffee is.
@Ropetupa
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
When I first read about this in "Over the hedge" I thought that it was a joke.
@SevenDeMagnus
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Cool
@derbabbel488
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Such a lovely and interesting story I've never heard of until now, despite the fact that I grew up in the mid to late 90ies with my first PC and the Internet. Thx for sharing.
@TheWhatnought
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Fascinating Captain. On Vulcan we just made fresh coffee.
@MartinBrenner
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
What a cool piece of computer history, thanks for sharing the story! It is nice the Germans picked up the pieces and immortalized the coffee cam. I have yet to visit the Nixdorf museum.
@der.Schtefan
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Can you imagine having an HPUX workstation in 1991? I have water in my eyes just dreaming of this.
@chrisroyle4813
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
I'm glad I heard a reference to this on the museum visit video as it was an enjoyable watch.
@BinTechLLC
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
28:07 Yup, the link works! Heck yeah!
@downthegardenpath
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
I work with Daniel Gordon (he still works in video over IP, believe it or not). Thank you for telling the story in full. His contribution is often missed.
@The_Conspiracy_Analyst
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
I did this way before 1993 or whatever he said, using My Mac IIsi (and others) with framegrabber hardware and simple file transfer client. The client could set how often they wanted a refresh with the custom client software (like I said it was simple), and it would send a file request over telnet or rcp (user configurable again). I wrote the whole thing in a weekend using CodeWarrior. It just goes to show you that these publicity and fame seeking weirdos are in actually way behind the TRUE pioneer hackers that actually did the shi+
@aethelred9781
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
It wasn't sending video of the coffee pot through the network though it was sending an image of the coffee pot every twenty seconds. That doesn't seem groundbreaking for that time it was something anyone could already do on the internet.
@darthdonkulous1810
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
This is seriously interesting! Love hearing about earlier days of the interwebs tech.
@alexhajnal107
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
418 I'm a teapot
@ClassicComputingMedia
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Wow, what an excellent piece, thank you. Absolute old-school high quality television quality reporting, in a fun, but otherwise serious and thorough documentary style. Really enjoyed it.
@derbychang
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Ah, JenniCam….now, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time… a long time.
@AthosJosue
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
With that voice and good storytelling, he could be a great youtuber.
@Mano-One
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
This was a fantastic video thank you
@fensoxx
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
That was great! Thanks for the old website screenshots.
@alanprather8399
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
my favorite part is that this was all due to shitty building design.
@bernardopaul7861
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
It also appears on the wonderful tv series HALT AND CATCH FIRE, which is itself a potent computing nostalgia trip, and where one of the protagonist's various tech start-ups is an early-internet directory and he's mistified and amazed by this website that features 24/7 live video transmission of a coffee pot.
@trinidad17
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Thanks Peter for keeping the memory of this type of thing alive, just seeing the outline of it brought the memories of back when reading in some weird magazine about the internet connected coffee pot, that still is referenced in HTTP response code 418
@worawatli8952
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
The amount of puns in news articles are so good. rofl
"First star of the internet goes to ground. "
"Fade to black: coffee pot cam to go offline."
"Coffee pot webcam to go dark. "
"Beans and gone. "
"Coffee cam grinds to a halt. "
@maxheadrom3088
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
I remember that when it was put on the internet. I had just entered college (university) and we would check that on some Sun workstations. If I recall correctly it was even mentioned on Wired magazine.
@worawatli8952
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
15:28 First internet livestreamer ever was a coffee pot. lol
@johngangemi1361
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Great video!
@johngangemi1361
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Internet history is so strange yet it's so interesting.
@DanielleWhite
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
A long legacy of the RFC is that HTTP 418 made it into the standard and is used by some software for debug logging.
@005AGIMA
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Some of your best work mate. I loved this video.
@Daqtagh47
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
I actually visited that museum today because of this video 😀
@colinstu
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
when are we gonna talk about the BeBox and its Geek Port that can control a coffee machine?
@shia_labeouf
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
27:37 Oh man, I had both of those phones! The badass Nokia 7110 and the HTC G1, the first Android phone
@itsmatt517
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Wow, just imagine how different things would have been if every floor had it's own coffee pot
@ghostfox3560
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
To drink by the pot is the ONLY way to have the coffee. Good story to cover. Hard to think back at the coffee maker in this tale and then be reminded of another staple that rose after it, Gevalia Coffee… They offered Krups coffee makers with their coffee subscription service. Those versions… Those made some nasty coffee… But… That's also an old memory to me now.
@krmr
January 12, 2026 at 11:20 am
Wholesome video! Real polished work and great lore!
Comments are closed.