[ih] History of IoT

[Michael Thomas]

Hi all,

I've been trying to understand the history of what we'd now call the 
Internet of Things. I know about the internet coke machine which was in 
about 1983 and then the internet toaster in around 1990. but that's a 
lot of time in between that seems to be blank. It would shock me if 
students didn't follow suit with their own versions of coke machine like 
hacks in the mean time. The timelines I've seen credit the toaster as 
being the first IoT device, but I'm not sure why the coke machine 
doesn't qualify because it's just as much of a hack as the toaster.

My personal stake -- and the reason for my curiosity -- is that I 
designed the software for an ethernet enabled laser printer in the mid 
80's which is very likely to be the first (I'd be happy to hear 
otherwise) for a printer. We added IP to it a year or two later so it 
was definitely before 1990, but I've lost access to source control so 
it's really hard to verify my claims. So if it wasn't the first IoT 
device (and I don't think it was, the coke machine was really clever), 
it could have been the first IoT device that had commercial value. It 
was definitely a selling point even back then even though it was 
obviously still pretty niche. The company who contracted us for it sold 
to a lot of universities so they'd have had a ready audience.

So does anybody have any memories of IoT in that era? Any good 
resources? I almost drove up to ISI for an IETF meeting after struggling 
with lprd which was not very well suited to the task of something 
embedded in a device. Alas, it was easier procrastinate. There probably 
wouldn't have been all that much interest since there were so many other 
fish to fry at that time as well.

Hopefully the output of this a blog post that I'd like to put together.

cheers, Mike