The world's oldest webcam is still watching over SF

'A fluke': The world's oldest webcam is still watching over San Francisco

FogCam looks out from a second story window in the business building toward the main quad at San Francisco State University on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

The average student at San Francisco State University probably doesn’t even know it’s there.

But on a recent Tuesday morning on campus, as throngs of them dart off to their next class or settle onto the grassy quad to enjoy their lunch, the presence looms over them — a relic of bygone technology no more than a few inches tall and held up by a couple of pieces of blue gaffer tape. 

Almost instinctively, Andrew Roderick stops in his tracks to look up at it.

“There it is,” the associate vice president of the university’s academic technology department says. “In the window just up there.” 

His colleague, communications coordinator Robyn Ollodort, excitedly rummages through her pocket to pull out her iPhone, then shows me the screen displaying a website that hasn’t changed much since it was launched nearly three decades ago. “The San Francisco FogCam!” it reads in red italicized letters. “The world’s oldest webcam. Live San Francisco views since 1994.” Beneath it is a grainy photograph that reminds me of a home video recorded on a VHS tape; a surreal, bird’s-eye view of where we’re standing, just to the right of the Cesar Chavez Student Center. 

“We’re on it right now,” Ollodort says.

I squint my eyes, but sure enough, there we are — a cluster of tiny silhouettes under a light pole on the tree-lined sidewalk. The only thing missing is the camera’s namesake fog. Twenty seconds later, the image disappears forever. 

A few years ago, FogCam itself almost met a similar fate.

Robyn Ollodort, of SFSU's academic technology department, shows off Fogcam on her iPhone, on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

Though it’s revered today as a technology milestone and a pioneer of the World Wide Web, Roderick describes FogCam as a student project that started in the university’s instructional technologies department in the fall of 1994 and just never left. Co-creator Jeff Schwartz, known online as Webdog, was a graduate student at the time, and while learning how to script, he discovered the first-ever live webcam, which actually predated the internet — the Trojan Room Coffee Pot cam at the University of Cambridge. 

Its purpose was simple: to provide researchers in the computer lab with an easy way to check whether the coffee pot in the next room over was full or empty. When web browsers gained the ability to display images and they connected the cam to the internet in 1993, tech enthusiasts around the world were captivated by the concept, Schwartz included.

A quad-level view of where FogCam is housed in the business building at San Francisco State University. 

Charles Russo/SFGATE

He worked with a staff member supporting the department, Dan Wong, aka Danno, to get their own webcam up and running as an experiment of sorts. They used a Connectix QuickCam — the first webcam-like device made for widespread distribution — connected to a Mac they bought at the campus bookstore, fusing them together with a custom-made software. 

They called it FogCam because of the misty view it provided of campus from its first location inside Burk Hall. A year later, Schwartz rigged up a similar setup at his apartment in the Mission District so he could keep an eye on his cats, Petunia and Web, while he was in class.

“As far as I knew, they were the first cats live on the Internet,” he told SFGATE in 2019. 

Roderick, who was a graduate student in the same program as Schwartz, remembered how novel people considered the FogCam. Flip phones weren’t around yet. Most people were still getting their photographs developed at the drugstore. AOL Instant Messenger was still three years away from inception. Information wasn’t just a Google search away. It would be another decade until Facebook and MySpace established a social media scene. Even reality television was finding its footing — around the time FogCam was born, “The Real World” was in the middle of airing its third season, filmed in San Francisco. 

Seeing a rogue project on the campus network was something that virtually never happened. 

Dan Wong, top row, Jeff Schwartz and others at San Francisco State University pose for FogCam in these photos from 1995. This cardboard cutout of a dog was the star of many of them.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

“It was technology we likened to ‘The Jetsons’ at the time,” Roderick said with a laugh. “Webcams represented the first point in time where you could have a camera that was made to distribute images in an intentional way on the internet. It created that first idea that we could connect on a screen and sort of predicted the Zoom thing that we came to rely upon during the pandemic.” 

The slice-of-life view FogCam provides is primitive by today’s standards, producing images with a resolution of no more than 320 by 200 pixels, said Daniel Johnson, a systems administrator for the academic technology department.

“Still, it was a rare commodity then,” he said. “It was like, ‘You put this thing on the network and it’s generating images? They’re so big!’ And they were like, a megabyte.”

FogCam was also one of the first websites to experiment with the early stages of social media, briefly hosting its own live chat room in conjunction with the webcam. Schwartz told SFGATE in 2019 that MTV’s Adam Curry reached out to ask them how to use a similar model for his own website. 

The late Kim Foreman, who was the instructional technology department chair at the time FogCam was created, said the project was the first of its kind.

“If [Schwartz] was commercial enough, he probably could have sold the idea and made a lot of money,” she told the Golden Gate Xpress in 2004. 

FogCam is taped to a second story window in the business building looking out towards the main quad at San Francisco State University on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

Fog was rarely the only thing the webcam captured. Over the years, Wong and Schwartz placed it in front of the student health center overlooking Tapia Drive so people could see if parking spots were available. Occasionally, they pointed it at the Cafe Rosso line in homage to the Trojan Room Coffee Pot cam, which shut down for good in 2001. For a while, it was on the ground floor of the humanities building pointing at a bush before it was moved to the library, facing out toward Holloway Avenue. 

"It was just a little pet project that developed a life of its own," Schwartz said. "People liked it so we kept it going." But in August of 2019, to the surprise of many, they announced they were going to pull the plug.

After 25 years, Fogcam is shutting down forever at the end of August. Webdog & Danno thank our viewers and San Francisco State University for their support over the years.

The Internet has changed a lot since 1994, but Fogcam will always have a special place in its history.

— FogCam! (@FogCam) August 18, 2019

“After 25 years, FogCam is shutting down forever,” a notice read on its website. “The internet has changed dramatically since 1994, but FogCam will always have a special place in its history.” 

That year, Schwartz told SFGATE he felt it was the right time to let things go. 

“The bottom line is that we no longer have a really good view or place to put the camera,” he said. “The university tolerates us, but they don't really endorse us and so we have to find secure locations on our own.”

What proved surprising was the response from the public that following week. The news was relayed by the New York Times, the BBC, Vice, Smithsonian Magazine and NPR, among several other outlets, garnering international attention. Twitter users called it “the end of an era.” A hashtag, #SaveTheFogCam, was born. Some people even offered donations to keep it running. 

“I did not expect it at all,” Roderick said. “I probably wouldn’t have noticed them shutting it down if it hadn’t been that it got some press play. It started off pretty underground. … The history of the cam in the past was that they were surreptitiously putting it in places on campus where they didn’t think anybody would disturb it or make them turn it off. But it popped up to visibility. People really cared about this thing.”

By the end of the month, Schwartz came to an agreement with SFSU, allowing them to take over the reins of FogCam indefinitely — just in time for its 25th birthday on Sept. 30, as KQED first reported. It’s now under the purview of the academic technologies department, where Wong still works to this day. Roderick credits his colleague’s efforts as the primary source of FogCam’s survival.

“I think it’s because he was still on campus [after Schwartz graduated] and was able to babysit the thing and keep it alive,” he said. “That’s really the main reason why we’re even talking about it today.”

Three years later, it’s somewhat amusing to imagine the public outcry when I discover how humble FogCam’s appearance is in person. To see the webcam for ourselves, we have to make our way up to the second floor of the business building and down a narrow hallway until we reach a deserted conference room. Tucked away in the corner and rigged up on a flexible plastic tripod — an upgrade from what apparently used to be a red Solo cup — is an ordinary Logitech camera looking out from a dusty window. A cord runs down to a computer propped up on the carpet, and the note taped to it is the only indication that a historical artifact resides here: “SFSU FogCam,” it reads in Sharpie. “Please do not disturb. Comments/questions? Contact Academic Technology.”

These days, FogCam’s greatest peril is a power outage or the risk of getting accidentally unplugged by a janitor. And its upkeep is minimal — Johnson moved the webcam to this location not long before the pandemic, and the department tends to check on it only when it gets knocked over or technological difficulties arise. Coincidentally, after taking over FogCam, the department faced the challenge of helping the entire student body make the shift to remote learning in a single week, handing out thousands of webcams in the process. They also stayed on campus to provide tech support and became inundated with requests.

“Everything, at that point, relied on your computer and whatever your home setup was. So FogCam was a bit of a sideshow for us,” Roderick joked.

The camera has changed a few times over the years, but it’s the software itself that makes FogCam the longest-running device of its kind. To update the website, academic technology staff have to manually go in and edit the HTML — kind of like an old MySpace profile — and when they have to buy a new camera, they always stick with an older model to preserve the old-school charm.

Inflatable obstacle course (?) on the quad... pic.twitter.com/TeeqQZvTm8

— FogCam! (@FogCam) September 21, 2022

“The longevity of it is the novelty of it now,” Ollodort said. “I value it for the pirate radio aspect; that it was not necessarily an endorsed student project but it continued.”

For the most part, Roderick said people don’t even realize it’s there. A few have asked if FogCam has backup storage so they could use it to provide proof in the event of a theft or similar incident on campus, or to simply see a photo of themselves. But FogCam doesn’t save any of its data — once a photo is posted to the website, it vanishes forever — save for a few shots Ollodort and Johnson have posted on FogCam’s Twitter in recent years.

“We’re not preserving anything. And that kind of feels the way FogCam should be,” Roderick said with a grin. “What happens on FogCam stays on FogCam. Not that anything untoward would ever happen on campus, but that’s kind of the spirit of it.” 

There’s been a longtime debate over whether to upgrade the quality or frequency of FogCam, but the idea always gets shot down. Ollodort describes herself as anti-surveillance and won’t even buy a Ring camera to check on her dog while she’s away.

FogCam looks out from a second story window in the business building towards the main quad at San Francisco State University on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

“To me, that’s what’s important about FogCam. Not letting those modern impulses and influences change it,” she said.

The staff discussed the possibility of setting up a FogCam II someday — a modern cousin with a higher resolution camera and an alternative, distant view of campus. But for now, some people still find use in FogCam’s early appeal. 

Elaine Leung, an adjunct professor at SFSU who also reports on weather and traffic for a division of iHeartMedia, said she was a student when FogCam launched and reported on it for the campus radio station, KSFS.

“I remember a handful of us students going into a dark room with this enormous computer that took forever to turn on, and sounded like a wind machine,” she said. “It was so slow and archaic when you think about it now, but it was very exciting at the time.”

Today, she still checks FogCam on a regular basis for weather updates at work, and tells her students about it, too. 

“It reminds me of when I was a college student,” she said. “It’s precious to me, and I hope it stays around forever.”

Roderick believes the fact that FogCam is a mirror into the past is what makes it special.

“I think it was a fluke,” he said. “We never really thought that the sum total of preserving it would make a big difference in anyone’s life, but we realized it would mean a lot more to lose it.”