The early Internet was magical.<p>The fact that you could see a place through a camera, in real time and whenever you wanted, on the other side of the world, was magical.<p>Before webcams, only large television networks had the technical ability to do that, through an extremely expensive satellite connection.<p>Now, 16-year-old-me could do it from my bedroom.
I got to know Quentin Stafford-Fraser a bit when I was at Cambridge. He's a really down-to-earth guy who was working on all sorts of interesting projects.<p>He's got more details on the whole Trojan Room Coffee Pot experience on his blog: <a href="https://quentinsf.com/coffeepot/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://quentinsf.com/coffeepot/</a>
I worked in a room in the new Computer Laboratory building, in which "can we throw out this random old coffee machine, or is it history?" was a real question.<p>It definitely wasn't the <i>first</i> Trojan Room coffee machine but whether it was one of the family was an open question.
Reminds me of the coke machine at the computer science house at RIT<p><a href="https://www.rit.edu/news/recognition-historic-hack-leads-coke-and-smile" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.rit.edu/news/recognition-historic-hack-leads-cok...</a>