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Webcam
A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in video telephony, live streaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware, like a laptop. or peripheral devices, and are commonly connected to a device using USB or wireless protocol.
Webcams have been used on the Internet as early as 1993, and the first widespread commercial one became available in 1994. Early webcam usage on the Internet was primarily limited to stationary shots streamed to web sites. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, instant messaging clients added support for webcams, increasing their popularity in video conferencing. Computer manufacturers later started integrating webcams into laptop hardware. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shortage of webcams due to the increased number of people working from home and children from school.
First developed in 1991, a webcam was pointed at the Trojan Room coffee pot in the Cambridge University Computer Science Department (initially operating over a local network instead of the web). The camera was finally switched off on August 22, 2001. The final image captured by the camera can still be viewed at its homepage. The oldest continuously operating webcam, San Francisco State University's FogCam, has run since 1994 and is still operating as of October 2025.[update] It updates every 20 seconds.
The SGI Indy, released in 1993, is the first commercial computer to have a standard video camera, and the first SGI computer to have standard video inputs.
The maximum supported input resolution is 640×480 for NTSC or 768×576 for PAL. A fast machine is required to capture at either of these resolutions, though; an Indy with slower R4600PC CPU, for example, may require the input resolution to be reduced before storage or processing. However, the Vino hardware is capable of DMAing video fields directly into the frame buffer with minimal CPU overhead.
The first widespread commercial webcam, the black-and-white QuickCam, entered the marketplace in 1994, created by the U.S. computer company Connectix. QuickCam was available in August 1994 for the Apple Macintosh, connecting via a serial port, at a cost of $100. Jon Garber, the designer of the device, had wanted to call it the "Mac-camera", but was overruled by Connectix's marketing department; a version with a PC-compatible parallel port and software for Microsoft Windows was launched in October 1995. The original Quick Cam provided 320x240-pixel resolution with a grayscale depth of 16 shades at 60 frames per second, or 256 shades at 15 frames per second. These cam were tested on several Delta II launch using a variety of communication protocols including CDMA, TDMA, GSM and HF.
Videoconferencing via computers already existed, and at the time client-server based videoconferencing software such as CU-SeeMe had started to become popular.
The first widely known laptop with integrated webcam option, at a pricepoint starting at US$ 12,000, was an IBM RS/6000 860 laptop and its related ThinkPad 850, released in 1996.
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Webcam
A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in video telephony, live streaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware, like a laptop. or peripheral devices, and are commonly connected to a device using USB or wireless protocol.
Webcams have been used on the Internet as early as 1993, and the first widespread commercial one became available in 1994. Early webcam usage on the Internet was primarily limited to stationary shots streamed to web sites. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, instant messaging clients added support for webcams, increasing their popularity in video conferencing. Computer manufacturers later started integrating webcams into laptop hardware. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shortage of webcams due to the increased number of people working from home and children from school.
First developed in 1991, a webcam was pointed at the Trojan Room coffee pot in the Cambridge University Computer Science Department (initially operating over a local network instead of the web). The camera was finally switched off on August 22, 2001. The final image captured by the camera can still be viewed at its homepage. The oldest continuously operating webcam, San Francisco State University's FogCam, has run since 1994 and is still operating as of October 2025.[update] It updates every 20 seconds.
The SGI Indy, released in 1993, is the first commercial computer to have a standard video camera, and the first SGI computer to have standard video inputs.
The maximum supported input resolution is 640×480 for NTSC or 768×576 for PAL. A fast machine is required to capture at either of these resolutions, though; an Indy with slower R4600PC CPU, for example, may require the input resolution to be reduced before storage or processing. However, the Vino hardware is capable of DMAing video fields directly into the frame buffer with minimal CPU overhead.
The first widespread commercial webcam, the black-and-white QuickCam, entered the marketplace in 1994, created by the U.S. computer company Connectix. QuickCam was available in August 1994 for the Apple Macintosh, connecting via a serial port, at a cost of $100. Jon Garber, the designer of the device, had wanted to call it the "Mac-camera", but was overruled by Connectix's marketing department; a version with a PC-compatible parallel port and software for Microsoft Windows was launched in October 1995. The original Quick Cam provided 320x240-pixel resolution with a grayscale depth of 16 shades at 60 frames per second, or 256 shades at 15 frames per second. These cam were tested on several Delta II launch using a variety of communication protocols including CDMA, TDMA, GSM and HF.
Videoconferencing via computers already existed, and at the time client-server based videoconferencing software such as CU-SeeMe had started to become popular.
The first widely known laptop with integrated webcam option, at a pricepoint starting at US$ 12,000, was an IBM RS/6000 860 laptop and its related ThinkPad 850, released in 1996.