The story of the Internet of Things begins not with a high-tech gadget, but with a simple soda machine in the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University.
The school says that in the early 1980s, a group of graduate students found themselves repeatedly frustrated by a Coca-Cola vending machine that was often empty or stocked with warm bottles. Tired of wasting time on fruitless trips to the machine, they decided to do something about it.
