[SIGCIS-Members] Help on Coffee and Computing

[Kevin Driscoll]

Hello Jim and SIGCIS,

Two references come to mind:

1. The "Trojan Room coffee pot" at the U of Cambridge is often cited as the
first live camera on the web:
- Quentin Stafford-Fraser, “On Site: The Life and Times of the First Web
Cam,” Communications of the ACM 44, no. 7 (July 1, 2001): 25–26.
https://doi.org/10.1145/379300.379327.
- Full text of above without paywall:
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/qsf/cacm200107.html
- Captured by the Wayback Machine on 10 December 1997:
http://web.archive.org/web/19971210230542/http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html

2. Roy Levin of Microsoft Research published a paper about running an
industry lab in which he recommends that managers "INSTALL A WORLD-CLASS
COFFEE MACHINE" and notes that "the first capital purchase" at MSR-Silicon
Valley was an espresso machine.
- Roy Levin, “A Perspective on Computing Research Management,” ACM SIGOPS
Operating Systems Review 41, no. 2 (April 1, 2007): 3–9,
https://doi.org/10.1145/1243418.1243420.

I've heard other lore about coffee culture at Microsoft that involves the
proximity of Starbucks in the 1990s. Allegedly, management lobbied for
coffee carts in every building to keep programmers from driving to
off-campus coffeehouses. No cite for that one but it would be fun to track
down the origin of the story.

Looking forward to a caffeinated special issue of the Annals on the
transnational history of stimulants and computing.

Best of luck,

Kevin Driscoll
U of Virginia


On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 3:41 PM James Cortada <jcortada at umn.edu> wrote:

>
> The IT community of users, programmers, vendors, etc have for decades had
> a reputation for being extensive consumers of coffee. In some parts of the
> IT ecosystem, especially among those who work odd hours, such as
> programmers, computer operators, and vendor field engineers.  I am studying
> the corporate ephemera of this industry and its cultural attachments, such
> as coffee cups and what they tell us about computing.  Do any of you have
> any information, ephemera, or sources and citations on this specific issue
> of coffee and computing?  I can get many industry folks, such as IBM
> retirees, to wax eloquently on the subject in their private FB accounts,
> but that is not enough.  Corporate culture is tough to study.  Thanks in
> advance for your help.  Jim
> --
> James W. Cortada
> Senior Research Fellow
> Charles Babbage Institute
> University of Minnesota
> jcortada at umn.edu
> 608-274-6382
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