The History of the Internet of Things

The history of the Internet of Things began with student initiatives and demonstrations of new technologies that preceded the coining of the term itself.

The informal birth of IoT occurred in 1982. Students at an American university equipped a vending machine with temperature sensors and drink availability indicators. The machine was connected to a PDP-10 computer for remote monitoring of cola stock levels.

The official history of the technology began in 1990. John Romkey, creator of the TCP/IP protocol, demonstrated a toaster controlled via remote connection at the Interop exhibition. The experiment aimed to showcase RFID technology capabilities rather than create a smart network.

Radio tags were actively used for inventory management in warehouses and stores. Retail became the first industry to apply remote object monitoring principles. The term "Internet of Things" appeared only nine years after these events.

The concept was officially introduced by researcher Kevin Ashton in 1999. He worked with RFID technologies and popularized the idea of connecting objects into a single network. This event marked the beginning of the modern development of the IoT industry.