Chapter 1. Introduction
XCoffee was not what the designers of the Internet had in mind when they connected computers at research sites across the United States under the auspice of DARPA. Nor was it an expected application when the nuclear scientists at CERN invented the Web to facilitate information sharing. XCoffee refers to a video frame-grabber, installed in 1991, that is connected to a camera focused on a coffee machine in the Trojan Room at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge in England. Its installation had a very simple motivation. The Laboratory had a coffee club that shared the use of the coffee machine. Club members often negotiated several flights of stairs only to find the coffee pot empty. Frustrated, a couple ...
Get Programming Open Service Gateways with Java Embedded Server™ Technology now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
