A brief History of the Internet of Things

The internet has come a long way since its inception in the 1960’s as the ARPANET. Since then it has seen the rise and fall of many new protocols and many new uses and abilities of what we can do with this technology have been explored. To the average millennial, the internet is a collection of web pages that they can use to pass their assignments (Google, Wikipedia,…), to buy item’s online (Amazon, e-bay, Alibaba,…) and to talk to their friends and share their idea’s (Facebook, Twitter,…). And yet, as illustrated by the figure below, even now the internet is finding a new widespread use once more as the Internet of Things!

Source: Nokia Insight (2017). url: www.insight.nokia.com

The internet of things is not a new idea, though it has only recently caught on in popularity as this graph from Google trends shows.

The origin of the IoT can be traced back to the late 1990’s where a research group formed between several universities and companies known as the Auto-ID center was investigating the next logical successor to the barcode. The center realized that RFID was the way to go, and that the chip needed to be small and contain a lot of stored data, hence, the idea to store this information in the internet. The term “Internet of Things” was coined in the year 1999, by Kevin Ashton, executive director of the Auto-ID center. To quote from a 2009 article by Kevin Ashton;

“I could be wrong, but I’m fairly sure the phrase “Internet of Things” started life as the title of a presentation I made at Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1999. Linking the new idea of RFID in P&G’s supply chain to the then-red-hot topic of the Internet was more than just a good way to get executive attention.”

Yet it is apparent that even before this time, devices that we now consider to fall under the category of IoT devices, did in fact exist, although not referred to as such. Devices such as the Trojan room coffee pot and the “only” coke machine on the internet received a lot of coverage and aroused the public interest to extents that their creators never dreamed of. Even the first wearable IoT project was completed (and shut down) years before the term IoT was even coined.

After the success of small research groups and the birth of the IoT, many large multinational corporations started to research, use and release IoT products. In the year 2000, LG released a smart Fridge with internet connectivity and a large TFT screen. The fridge allowed users to access their email, browse the web and maintained an inventory of the items inside the fridge among other things.

By the 2004–2005 era, the idea of an interconnected internet of things was starting to catch on. Popular news and media outlets such as the Guardian, the Scientific American and the Boston Globe started using the terminology associated with IoT more often. It was in the same period that the International Telecommunications Union published its first report on the IoT.

In the year 2008, the number of connected devices exceeded human population. Gartner predicts that this number will rise to 20 billion by 2020. The year also saw the birth of the IPSO alliance, which drives towards enabling IoT devices’ hardware and software interoperability.

By the year 2011, DIY enthusiasts had an active interest in the internet of things and were developing their own solutions to problems using microcontroller boards and other technologies. The IETF also publicly launched the IPv6 protocol in this year assisting with the large number of internet connected devices that were to inevitably come. To assist with many of the IoT projects that were being undertaken by both hobbyists and businesses alike, new and existing software companies developed IoT platforms that would be useful for the end user to develop their IoT solutions in-house.

In the present and in the immediate future, we can undoubtedly expect to see more and more of the Internet of Things in our daily lives. The coffee pot will brew coffee for us at the right time in the morning, the fridge will learn to stock up on new ingredients and your car will tell you where there is parking available. As Kevin Ashton said;

“The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the Internet did. Maybe even more so.”

This article was originally published on my wordpress blog in April 2018 at https://kmilangaratne.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/a-brief-history-of-the-internet-of-things/