Internet Toaster
A toaster John Romkey controlled over the network with SNMP at Interop 1990, because a dare required it.
Interop founder Dan Lynch promised Romkey a prominent spot on the show floor if he could get a toaster online. Romkey, who had earlier written the PC/IP TCP/IP stack at MIT, wired an ordinary Sunbeam toaster to a network interface in 1990 and defined a custom MIB variable to switch on the heat. That was the entire interface, and it worked in front of an audience. The bread, however, still had to go in by hand.
For the following year's show Romkey and Simon Hackett added a small robotic crane to lower the slice, automating the whole chain. The toaster is an early demonstration that the hard part of connected appliances isn't the technology but finding a reason — a question the IoT industry is still wrestling with.