The IoT as a concept wasn't officially named until 1999. One of the first examples of the IoT was a Coca-Cola machine, located at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the early 1980s. Local programmers would connect through the internet to the refrigerated appliance checking to see if there was a drink available and whether it was cold before making a trip to it.
Kevin Ashton, the Executive Director of Auto-ID Labs at MIT, was the first to describe the IoT in a presentation for Procter and Gamble. During his 1999 speech, Mr. Ashton stated as follows: