cross-posted from: https://lemmy.capebreton.social/post/327322
The Trojan Room coffee pot was a coffee machine located in the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, England. Created in 1991 by Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky, it was migrated from their laboratory network to the web in 1993 becoming the world’s first webcam.
To save people working in the building the disappointment of finding the coffee machine empty after making the trip to the room, a camera was set up providing a live picture of the coffee pot to all desktop computers on the office network. After the camera was connected to the Internet a few years later, the coffee pot gained international renown as a feature of the fledgling World Wide Web, until being retired in 2001.
It went offline on August 22nd, 2001
Even if they went hard at making digital cameras, it probably wouldn’t hurt their business too much since they would replace film revenues with camera revenues. They would still be a 30B company, since valuations take into account future revenues. If it hurts current profits a little, but has good future prospects, that often still increases stock value
Example: AMD is breaking even right now, but the stock price is still high due to future AI chip sales.