I had been looking for a way to get pictures of the surf into my home for years starting in 1985. It was then that I called a security camera company to get a quote for installing a camera looking out at Manhattan Beach surf and sending the images to my house in Manhattan Beach. The rep said “No trouble, we can put a camera at the beach and transmit the digital signal to a repeating antenna up on the hill between you and the beach. The cost is $10,000”

Well, that was a lot more than I wanted to pay for this luxury. Then along came the internet and webcams. The most famous were the Netscape Fishcam and the USC Tommy Trojan Statue Cam. I called USC and talked to Carl Sutter about writing software for a webcam. He agreed and the result was a fine program that took the 3 actions necessary in 1995. First, dial the internet using a dialup program, 2nd, to take a picture. 3rd, open an FTP program (file transfer) to send the picture to the internet.

I called the result SnapNSend and got a trademark for it. Several online picture companies tried to block my trademark but they could not. Here is a historical look at the SnapNSend.com web site in those days.