The first webcam was invented at Cambridge University to monitor a coffee pot and avoid wasted trips.
This episode traces the surprisingly long history of video conferencing technology, from early 20th century experiments with transmitting still images, through Germany's 1936 video phone system, AT&T's expensive commercial attempts in the 1960s-70s, to the mathematical breakthroughs in video compression and the invention of the webcam that enabled today's ubiquitous tools like Zoom.
