The 1990s:

In 1990, John Romkey connected a toaster to the internet for the first time. A year later, a group of students at the University of Cambridge used a web camera to report on coffee. They came up with the idea to use the first web camera prototype to monitor the amount of coffee available in their computer labs coffee pot. They did this by programming the web camera to take photos three times a minute of the coffee pot. The photos were then sent to local computers so everyone could see if there was coffee available.