[ih] History of IoT

[Jorge Amodio]

Search for "Smart connected objects" ... things connected before calling
them IoT.

-J


On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 2:01 PM 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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