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Connectix QuickCam: The First Webcam
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kyl3B3nzl3 4y ago[dead]
- johndoe0815 4y agoThe first one… a year after the IndyCam :)
- solardev 4y agoApparently that's what the Netscape Fishcam used! https://sites.google.com/a/montulli.org/about-fishcam/Home/history https://sites.google.com/a/montulli.org/about-fishcam/Home/h...
- bluedino 4y agoWe had an SGI in middle school, and the only thing we ever did with it was play with the Indy Cam and some morphing demo. sigh
- Someone 4y agoIt’s not a webcam until you connect it to the web. The real first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot
- johndoe0815 4y agoRight, I remember watching the "stream" over our 64 kbps link at the university. But I think the IndyCam was the first one that was commercially available as a computer accessory, though not exactly affordable back then... still, my students today are amazed to learn that color video conferencing and 3D graphics were possibly almost 30 years ago on a machine that's much slower than an original Raspberry Pi.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tpmx 4y agoThat's an impressive range of products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix
- rcarmo 4y agoThe QuickCam page is also impressive on its own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickCam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickCam
- tpmx 4y agoFrom searching the web, it seems like the original one uses the TI TC255 CCD image sensor (https://www.google.com/search?q=Connectix+QuickCam+%22tc255%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=Connectix+QuickCam+%22tc255%...): https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/93863.pdf https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/93863.pdf The TC255 is a frame-transfer charge-coupled device (CCD) designed for use in B/W NTSC TV and special-purpose applications where low cost and small size are desired. The image-sensing area of the TC255 is configured in 243 lines with 336 elements in each line. It's a DIL through-hole package with just 8 pins. The output is analog. I wonder how they implemented the A/D conversion and the frame/line buffering.
- tpmx 4y agoIt's amazing how breakthroughs in the past now seem trivial. Everything has gotten so much easier/cheaper. A hobbyist can do what took quite a bit of funding back in the 80s/90s.
- gsliepen 4y agoThe frame buffering is a physical feature of the CCD. It actually has twice the number of lines, but half of them are behind a mask so they will never be exposed. When the exposure ends, it rapidly shifts the accumulated electrons from the exposed lines into the area with unexposed lines. From there, they can be read out by the ADC while another exposure is in progress.
- cm2187 4y ago
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoThe successor of that cam was used in American Pie for Jim to stream his attempt of getting laid with Nadia. https://youtu.be/CQIRJIiEJt0?t=48 https://youtu.be/CQIRJIiEJt0?t=48
- mrweasel 4y agoFor some reason nudes and porn from old crappy webcams where always more interesting than anything else the internet has to offer.
- rcarmo 4y agoWow. I remember plugging in the first one I got to a Mac IIfx, as well as fiddling with the parallel port on PCs. Setting up NetMeeting over ISDN using a later model (and, later , an Intel capture board, but I recall the VC QuickCam now, it was the first USB model) was partly what got me into telco: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/07/25/2030 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/07/25/2030
- mixmastamyk 4y agoI talked the boss into a purchase order for one to explore “video conferencing.” Connected it to my Mac IIci and experimented with CU-SeeMe. Blew my mind seeing folks in other countries, had only been using the net for ~6 mos. Later took shots every minute or so. Also had a web server running with cgi script that took a text input. You could see if I was at my desk from the page and sent me a spoken message. Mostly recived animal noises and profanity however. :-D
- derrikcurran 4y agoSome things never change
- Dracophoenix 4y agoI'm surprised no one here has brought up this webcam's relation to JenniCam (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley) and the birth of live-streaming as we know it.
- kaladin-jasnah 4y agoRelevant video from The 8-Bit Guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxQjMlwDA8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxQjMlwDA8A
- teddyh 4y agoA few years later when the webcam market had exploded, I remember always insisting on using Hauppauge WinTV cameras and capture cards, since those were real TV signal (i.e. PAL or NTSC) video cameras, and would guarantee a crisp TV resolution with usable TV framerates, unlike most webcams which were often terrible resolutions and/or atrocious framerates, and had strange proprietary signals and/or connectors, coupled with strange Windows-only drivers. The early USB cameras were before USB had the necessary bandwitdh, too, so this advice was good for many years. Hauppauge also had good Linux drivers.
- VectorLock 4y agoThis practice seems to continue on to this day.
- latchkey 4y agoI setup a cu-see me server at my college with one of these running on a A/UX Quadra 950 box. Let it go for a weekend and came back to user reports of it being used for porn. I see a lot of similar comments here about that. lol.
- invalidator 4y agoBecause it was a black and white camera, it only had a single IR filter which was easy to remove. The bare silicon sensor, unhindered by RGB color filters, had surprisingly good near-IR performance. We rigged up a bunch of IR LEDs and had a pretty good night vision webcam. I still have mine in the parts bin. Some day I should find a parallel port and try using it again to see how terrible it really was. :)
- brianolson 4y agoI did a high school science fair project in computer vision on one of these in 1996-1997. I'm still bitter that Logitech bought them out and cancelled the Mac version of the product and to this day I won't buy Logitech products.
- delecti 4y agoOne of my classes in college (in ~2010) had us implement communication with one of those from raw C. Implementing the bitmap file format from scratch remains one of the cooler things I've done, which probably means I should do more random projects.
- logotype 4y agoHad the QuickCam back in the day and it was so cool and futuristic to have a camera connected to the computer. It was fun making stop-motion videos with clay.
- Eleison23 4y agoIn these heady days of the mid-90s, I lived in Santa Cruz and worked as a consultant in Silicon Valley. I entrusted my girlfriend with all the toys that mattered, so naturally I picked up a QuickCam and we put it on her PC (although she had previously been an Amiga nerd). She spent hours on Cu-SeeMe and most of that time was as a porn magnet. She absolutely attracted guys who immediately sent live dick pics. So how does my lovely girlfriend respond but to capture and catalog all of them. She absolutely screenshotted every single one of those pics as they came in; she didn't waste a lot of time engaging anyone, but her collection grew to epic proportions. I'm not entirely sure why she kept it around; it wasn't for blackmail or publication, that's for sure.
- phasersout 4y agoAnd I always wonder if there is a use case for unsolicited "dick pics" in real live...
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y agoArt project?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- timthorn 4y agoThis can't go without mention of the Trojan Room Coffee Pot at Cambridge University, not so much a 'Web' cam but the first widely known Internet connected camera: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/qsf/coffee.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/qsf/coffee.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p010lvn7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p010lvn7