FogCam
longest-running webcam
FogCam is the longest-running webcam in the world, barring maintenance breaks and camera replacements. First set up in 1994 by two students Jeff Schwartz and Dan Wong, it captures the scenery of the San Francisco State University and uploads it to a dedicated website. It was nearly shut down in 2019 as the creators said they faced difficulties in maintaining the webcam. Following public outcry, the university agreed to take over ownership and continue its maintenance.
Operation
The webcam is stationed at San Francisco State University, capturing student life and occasionally San Francisco's common fog. Every 20 seconds, a low-resolution (less than 320 by 200 pixels) image is taken and uploaded to its website and the previous image is deleted. The camera has been moved several times partly due to pressures from the administration. Previous locations include a student health center with a view of the Tapia Drive, the Cafe Rosso line as a nod to the Trojan Room Coffee Pot webcam, the library overlooking Holloway Avenue, and the ground floor of the humanities building. According to Schwartz, students used FogCam for practical purposes like checking the length of the line at the Cafe Rosso and looking for free parking spaces. When camera replacements are made, the university opts for a dated model to stay true to its origins.
The public source identifies “FogCam” as longest-running webcam. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around FogCam, longest-running and webcam.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q129070692. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1994 and 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “FogCam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.