!!! Overview
[{$pagename}] ([Internet Toaster]) in [1990|Year 1990], the toast of [INTEROP] (an annual networking show and exhibition), was a Sunbeam Deluxe Automatic Radiant Control Toaster, connected to INTEROPnet, the network deployed for the duration of the show, via a [SLIP] connection and controlled via [Simple Network Management Protocol] (SNMP).

[{$pagename}] was the creation of John Romkey, whose credits include coding the first version of [TCP]/[IP] for [MS-DOS], co-founding [FTP Software] and a few other companies specializing in [TCP]/[IP] technologies, and being a leading developer of many of the things we as Internet users rely on daily.


At the October '89 [INTEROP] conference in San Jose, [California], Dan Lynch, President of the [INTEROP] Company (then Internet Inc.) promised Romkey that, if Romkey was able to "bring up his toaster on the Net," the appliance would be given star placement in the floor-wide internetwork to which all Interop exhibitors are required to link, at Interop '90.

Romkey did, and it was.

The Sunbeam toaster, according to Romkey, had one real control: power on and off. When the power goes off, it automatically pops the toast.

"We found we could calibrate the `degree of doneness' in software by controlling how long the power was on," says Romkey.

To save time and effort, Romkey joined forces with fellow Internet appliance networkers. "Team Toaster" included Simon Hackett, an Australian networking engineer whose company, Pnakotic Software (Adelaide, South Australia) does computer-controlled technology for audio/video applications.

The final toaster was a gleaming triumph to technology, both as "a good hack" and a demonstration that Internet technology could be made to do real-world tasks.

The Internet Toaster began a multiyear [INTEROP] tradition for funky networked devices. Subsequent years have seen the "Lego Loader" (an SNMP-controlled loader and remover for toast built of Legos), the [SNMP] weather bear, the [SNMP] table-top electric train, and the giant mouse (big enough to sit on).

Consider it an example of bread-and-butter networking.


Remember Back in [1990|Year 1990], only 3 million people had access to the [Internet] [2], and there were only 313,000 computers (not devices) on it [3]. Back in those days, to search, we used the [Wide Area Information Server] ([WAIS]), [Gopher], and [Archie]. To transfer or share files, we used [File Transfer Protocol] ([FTP]). Although the [World Wide Web] was invented in [1989|Year 1989] [4], it was not yet in common use.

!! Category
%%category [Humor]%%


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