[ih] History of IoT

[John Day]

Network Management was the first IoT and still is.  The architecture is the same just different object models.  One of the things the current IoT fad likes to ignore is that they will have to manage and debug their “IoT” installation.

IoT is mostly about hype and making it sound like it is a new thing. In our investigations, we have found nothing really different (mostly degenerate cases) in the lower communication layers.  The applications are as I said, mainly different object models.

Take care,
John

> On Feb 13, 2023, at 15:01, Michael Thomas via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
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