Quick History of the Internet of Things..

The internet isn’t that old if you really think about it. We’ve been working on it for decades but so far as public use, it’s only been a short span of about 20 years. In 1974, the TCIP/IP structure that we know today had it’s birth. It was not until ten years later that the first domain name system or DNS was introduced. The first website actually came online in 1991. The internet that was proposed just a scant two years earlier came crashing into our mainstream world. It was a technological awakening that had been a long time coming.

In no time the internet took over. By 1995, multiple websites and systems came online. Entertainment by means of bulletin board systems began to be seen. All of it came from the imaginings of others that had taken place decades earlier.

The term “internet of things” or “IoT” is also not a new one. It’s frequently used and has been so for years, but in a survey it was revealed that even those who work in it every day are not at all conversant with the history of the IoT. That history—or at least the ideology—goes back a great deal further than most people know.

The first look at the internet of things—arguably—came from Nicola Tesla in 1926 when he commented in Collier’s “When wireless* is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole………and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.” It was a comment that got him laughed at in some circles, but one which was remarkably accurate considering the state of computing at that time.

In 1998, Google incorporated and too, in 1998, inTouch a project that was developed at MIT was put into play by Scott Brave and Professor Hiroshi Ishii who announced “….We then present inTouch, which applies Synchronized Distributed Physical Objects to create a “tangible telephone” for long distance haptic communication.”

In 1998, the real IoT was touched by Mark Weiser, who developed a water fountain that was amazing and delightful to everyone who saw it. It rose and fell respectively according to the pricing trends and the volume of stock on the NYSE.

1999 saw the term Internet of Things spoken by Kevin Ashton who was the then executive director for the Auto-ID Center. “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.”

Business Week in 1999 was the scene of the next big announcement about the term Internet of Things. 1999 – Neil Gross, speaking to Business Week commented, “In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies–even our dreams.”

IoT has continued to grow and to evolve and projections are bright for this new methodology for using the internet. The future of IoT is now –with devices coming online every day. The world is reliant upon connected cars, connected medical devices and even connected homes. Motorcycles, vehicles and even wearables are growing daily. Iot homes and even utility monitors and meters are coming online daily across the country.

Companies today are scrambling to get their own IoT systems online and moving, and new recruits are being brought in every day to head up IoT systems in companies from small to large.

Today, 2016, IoT is growing by leaps and bounds. The vast majority of companies are seeking some way to get on board the IoT train. In many cases, IoT has solved problems, in other cases, such as the security aspects, IoT has caused as many issues as it has resolved.

Suffice it to say that IoT will continue to grow and to present challenges and benefits for the companies who are using it. IoT managers and CIoTO’s are among the business employees who are in demand today because of the vast and rapid growth of IoT. What is your company doing to find those new and necessary IoT workers today?