In the last section, we have seen what IoT is and we have looked at a few examples as well. In this section, we are going to take a look at the history of IoT.
Even before Kevin Ashton coined the term Internet of Things in 1999, this technology existed in other forms and shapes, pretty much doing the same thing.
To put things into perspective, the first TCP/IP communication was made in 1974 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite), which stemmed from the success of ARPANET (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET) in 1969.
Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) one of the first connected devices, were launched in 1969. It was a very exciting time in the banking domain, where people could get instant cash.
Take a look at this demo of an ATM from 1969 named 'Instant money': ATM comes to Australia (1969): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuClDSofyJs.
Then there came the famous Internet Coke Machine, built by four students of Carnegie Mellon University in 1982. This machine used ARPANET to communicate and could be queried in real-time remotely using a finger interface. This machine lets you know about the stock of Coke in the machine along with the information about the Coke's coldness.
The next notable and documented incident that happened in the connected devices space was The Internet Toaster in 1989. John Romkey connected a toaster to the internet using a TCP/IP protocol and controlled it using a Simple Networking Management Protocol Management Information Base (SNMP MIB). This internet toaster could be turned on remotely and the darkness of the toast was controlled by the duration of the toaster being powered on.
In 1991, Sir Timothy Berners Lee and CERN announced the World Wide Web (WWW) outside the CERN. Do note that until this time no one had seen a web page or HTML document in the outside world; it was all packets of data transmitted over wire.
With the invention of the WWW, people started working with the world of connected things with more ease.
The next event in history that brought in a new dimension to the connected things world was the Trojan Room coffee pot created by Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky in 1993. Using a video frame-grabber present inside the Trojan Room, they were able to take pictures of a coffee pot present inside the Trojan Room every few seconds and then send these to a server. The client application on the other side could show these images and if the coffee in the coffee pot was low, people could remotely get to know and then refill the coffee pot.
As you see from this series of incidents, the concept of connected devices is quite old. And the industrial sector is no stranger to it. Machines connected to each other over PLC can each be controlled, monitored, and managed from far away.
As you can see, the world of connected devices and the Internet of Things is evolving faster than ever. The motivation is: laziness. I believe that in this time and age, laziness is the mother of invention!
That concludes this walk down memory lane. In the next section, we are going to look at IoT and the market.
