Quentin Stafford-Fraser

Last updated

Quentin Stafford-Fraser
Quentin Stafford-Fraser (493577895).jpg
Nationality British
Occupation Computer scientist
Known for Trojan room coffee pot
Website quentinsf.com

James Quentin Stafford-Fraser is a computer scientist and entrepreneur based in Cambridge, England. He was one of the team that created the first webcam, the Trojan room coffee pot. Quentin pointed a camera at the coffee pot and wrote the XCoffee client program which allowed the image of the pot to be displayed on a workstation screen. When web browsers gained the ability to display images, the system was modified to make the coffee pot images available over HTTP and thus became the first webcam. [1]

Contents

Quentin wrote the original VNC client (viewer) and server for the Windows operating system, while at the Olivetti Research Laboratory. [2]

He is a regular public speaker and his work has attracted significant media coverage. [3]

Quentin is also a part-time Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge Computer Lab. [4] In 2013 he was a member of the winning team on Christmas University Challenge , representing Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge.

The famous coffee pot Trojan Room coffee pot xcoffee.png
The famous coffee pot

Companies founded

Quentin has founded or co-founded various companies and other organisations including:

Earlier history

Quentin was educated at Haileybury before studying Computer Science at the University of Cambridge and in 1989 became the first Cambridge college Computer Officer, at his old college, Gonville and Caius College, before joining the Systems Research Group in the University's Computer Lab. Quentin is credited with operating the first web-server in the University of Cambridge, in 1992.

He created the Brightboard Interactive whiteboard project [6] at Xerox EuroPARC in Cambridge, as part of his Ph.D thesis. [7]

Related Research Articles

Ubiquitous computing is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can exist in many different forms, including laptop computers, tablets, smart phones and terminals in everyday objects such as a refrigerator or a pair of glasses. The underlying technologies to support ubiquitous computing include Internet, advanced middleware, operating system, mobile code, sensors, microprocessors, new I/O and user interfaces, computer networks, mobile protocols, location and positioning, and new materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Augmented reality</span> View of the real world with computer-generated supplementary features

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive, or destructive. This experience is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. In this way, augmented reality alters one's ongoing perception of a real-world environment, whereas virtual reality completely replaces the user's real-world environment with a simulated one.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Webcam</span> Video camera connected to a computer or network

A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripheral devices, and are commonly connected to a device using USB or wireless protocols.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual Network Computing</span> Graphical desktop-sharing system

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop-sharing system that uses the Remote Frame Buffer protocol (RFB) to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse input from one computer to another, relaying the graphical-screen updates, over a network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trojan Room coffee pot</span> Predecessor of the webcam

The Trojan Room coffee pot was a coffee machine located in the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, England. Created in 1991 by Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky, it was migrated from their laboratory network to the web in 1993 becoming the world's first webcam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project Athena</span> Joint project to produce a distributed computing environment for educational use

Project Athena was a joint project of MIT, Digital Equipment Corporation, and IBM to produce a campus-wide distributed computing environment for educational use. It was launched in 1983, and research and development ran until June 30, 1991. As of 2020, Athena is still in production use at MIT. It works as software that makes a machine a thin client, that will download educational applications from the MIT servers on demand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge</span>

The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. As of 2007 it employed 35 academic staff, 25 support staff, 35 affiliated research staff, and about 155 research students. The current Head of Department is Professor Ann Copestake.

A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, webcasting is "broadcasting" over the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Fisher (technologist)</span>

Scott Fisher is the Professor and Founding Chair of the Interactive Media Division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and Director of the Mobile and Environmental Media Lab there. He is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively on virtual reality, including pioneering work at NASA, Atari Research Labs, MIT's Architecture Machine Group and Keio University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael J. C. Gordon</span> British computer scientist

Michael John Caldwell Gordon FRS was a British computer scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">College of Technology & Engineering, Udaipur</span> Public college in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

The College of Technology and Engineering (CTAE), is a public engineering college located in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. It is one of the top ranking engineering institute of the state offering varied courses in engineering.

Peter Robinson is Professor of Computer Technology at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in England, where he works in the Rainbow Group on computer graphics and interaction. He is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and lives in Cambridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Remote desktop software</span> Desktop run remotely from local device

In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely off of one system, while being displayed on a separate client device. Remote desktop applications have varying features. Some allow attaching to an existing user's session and "remote controlling", either displaying the remote control session or blanking the screen. Taking over a desktop remotely is a form of remote administration.

Bruce Howard McCormick (1928–2007) was an American computer scientist, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Computer Science, and founding director of the Brain Networks Lab at Texas A&M University.

Lars Broholm Tharp is a Danish-born British historian, lecturer and broadcaster, and one of the longest running 'experts' on the BBC antiques programme, Antiques Roadshow, first appearing in 1986.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Godfrey Stafford</span> British physicist

Godfrey Harry Stafford CBE, FRS, was a British physicist and directed the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories from 1969 to 1981. He went on to be a master at St Cross College, Oxford and president of the Institute of Physics. In 1950 Dr. Stafford married Helen Goldthorp Clark, an Australian biologist. He has a son and twin daughters and lived near Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge</span> Constituent college of the University of Cambridge

Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius, is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of the wealthiest. The college has been attended by many students who have gone on to significant accomplishment, including fifteen Nobel Prize winners, the second-highest of any Oxbridge college after Trinity College, Cambridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andy Schofield</span> British physicist

Andrew John Schofield is an academic and administrator who is the Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster University. A theoretical physicist, he was previously a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Birmingham and Head of its College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. As an academic, his research focus is in the theory of correlated quantum systems, in particular non-Fermi liquids, quantum criticality and high-temperature superconductivity.

Professor John Dixon Mollon DSc FRS. is a British scientist. He is a leading researcher in visual neuroscience. His work has been cited over 15,000 times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Studierfenster</span>

Studierfenster or StudierFenster (SF) is a free, non-commercial open science client/server-based medical imaging processing online framework. It offers capabilities, like viewing medical data in two- and three-dimensional space directly in standard web browsers, like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge. Other functionalities are the calculation of medical metrics, manual slice-by-slice outlining of structures in medical images (segmentation), manual placing of (anatomical) landmarks in medical image data, viewing medical data in virtual reality, a facial reconstruction and registration of medical data for augmented reality, one click showcases for COVID-19 and veterinary scans, and a Radiomics module.

References

  1. "Trojan Room Coffee Pot resources at Cambridge University Computer Lab".
  2. Tristan Richardson; Quentin Stafford-Fraser; Kenneth R. Wood; Andy Hopper (January–February 1998). "Virtual Network Computing". IEEE Internet Computing. 2 (1): 33–39. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.17.5625 . doi:10.1109/4236.656066.
  3. "Talks and interviews".
  4. "About Quentin – Quentin Stafford-Fraser".
  5. "Splitting the digital difference". The Economist. No. Technology Quarterly. Third Quarter 2006.
  6. Stafford-Fraser, Q. & Robinson, P. (1996). "BrightBoard: A Video-Augmented Environment". CHI96: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in Computing Systems.
  7. Stafford-Fraser, Quentin (April 1997). "Video-Augmented Environments". University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Technical Reports. doi:10.48456/tr-419.