An example of this in the IoT space is the home automation market. Systems
such as those based on the power line protocol X10 have been around for close
to 40 years. (Early examples ran over electrical power lines and analogue
phone lines). The example in figure 4.5, from 1986, shows a system that
allowed users to program and remotely control their heating, lighting and
appliances over a (landline) phone. These are all applications that still seem
novel and innovative to us; they would have excited the innovators of the
1980s even more.
Figure 4.5: Advertisement for X10 Powerhouse for the Commodore 64, from
the January 1986 edition of Compute! Magazine (image via commodore.ca).