A live web cam is a small video camera whose video feed can be accessed via the Internet. Today, web cams are ubiquitous. People point them at construction projects, refrigerators, pedestrian walkways, dorm room hallways, and anywhere else a camera can be mounted.

The First Live Web Cam

"Old school" went high tech in 1991, when the very first live web cam was installed at Cambridge University, the second-oldest university in England. The camera focused on the coffee pot in a kitchen known as the "Trojan Room," located in the old computer laboratory at Cambridge. It transmitted a grayscale image of the coffee pot to users around the computer lab, and it performed a valuable function: it saved users a trip to the coffee pot when the pot was empty. When the live web cam showed that the pot was full of freshly brewed coffee, users would flock to the Trojan Room for a fresh cup.

Sadly, this live web cam, known as the "Trojan Room Coffee Pot," was shut off in August 2001. By then, the computer lab had drunk its way through four or five on-line coffee makers. The event was covered on the front page of mainstream newspapers like The Times of London an The Washington Post in the United States.

JenniCam – A Live Web Cam Lifecast

In 1996, a young Pennsylvania woman named Jenny Kaye Ringley shocked the world by setting up a live web cam in her apartment and allowing the entire Internet to view her as she went about her daily activities and lived her life. This form of live web cam broadcast became known as a "lifecast," and it is still in use today, most notably in reality TV series like Big Brother in the U.K. and the U.S. and The Real World on MTV.

Although JenniCam was touted as a live web cam, like the Trojan room coffee pot, the JenniCam merely transmitted still images of her apartment and her life, refreshed every three minutes. Live streaming web cam technology had not yet been invented. Ms. Ringley maintained and expanded the JenniCam through the end of 2003. She now lives in California and enjoys her privacy; she doesn't even have a MySpace page.

Streaming Live Web Cams

Like so many innovations on the Internet, the streaming live web cam technology was developed and commercialized by pornographers, whose customers demanded live images that would work without web browser plug-ins. Streaming web cam technology is widely used in a variety of forms today.