Eight major technological innovations in the history of smart home development

Nowadays, with the widespread application of smart devices represented by smart speakers, more and more People already feel that the home of the future seems to have arrived. We can speak into the air and magically turn on music, set a timer, or listen to the weather report. The tiny supercomputers in our pockets, like smartphones, can lock our doors, set our alarm clocks, and dim our lights to the right brightness at the touch of a button.

It is only in the past ten years or so that smart homes have really attracted the attention of mass consumers. However, today’s smart homes have gone through a long period of time before technological upgrades. Some people may question whether they are Really that smart. In fact, applying automation to home life has a long history.

When Home Appliances Became Automated

Home electrification in Europe and North America began to spread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, making the birth of the first home appliances possible. By 1925, about half of American households had electricity, and by the 1930s, two-thirds of British households had electricity.

By the mid-20th century, refrigerators, washing machines and vacuum cleaners, common household appliances we have today, have been widely used in the United States.

Although commercial refrigerators have been around since the 1850s, the first home refrigerator was not introduced until 1911. Home refrigerators didn't really take off until 1927, when GE introduced the "monitor-top" refrigerator, a design that combined the compressor and cold box into a single unit. It got its name because the compressor located on top of the unit was thought to resemble the gunwale on a battleship monitor. Even so, the refrigerator is still a bit unfriendly. In 1927, the Monitor Top sold for $525, which was a lot of money at the time.

Image source ##University of Buffalo

With the invention of Freon in 1928, home refrigeration achieved another major leap. Refrigerators began to gain widespread adoption in the 1930s. At the beginning of the 20th century, only 8% of American households owned one. By the late 1940s, refrigerators had become a common standard feature in American homes.

The exact inventor of the electric washing machine is disputed, but the Automatic Electric Washer Co. began manufacturing early washing machines in 1907. However, it wasn't until the 1950s that they became a staple of the average American home.

The washing machine pictured above is an early electric washing machine. According to reports, electric washing machines have been mass-produced by what is now Whirlpool Corporation since about 1906. In the 1920s, more than 1,000 companies manufactured washing machines.

Before the advent of automated machines, clothes were usually washed in natural bodies of water or basins, with the help of washboards or manual agitation devices such as wash plungers. Hand washing typically uses hot water, harsh cleaning chemicals, or raw soap to clean fabrics.

Into the late 19th century, a variety of machines, most of them hand-driven with agitators, replaced scrubbers and wringer/mashers. These machines reduce the labor involved in cleaning clothes. While these early machines were easier to use, they came with their own safety risks. The earliest powered machines simply had an electric motor attached to a hand-turn washing machine. The action of machines and wringer, especially when powered, can catch skin, hair, and clothing and cause injury.

It is unclear who actually invented the first electric washing machine, but some of the earliest known models were produced in 1907 by Orlando B. Woodrow of the Automatic Electric Washer Co. By 1910, they were selling over 40,000 machines per year.

Picture source: Joe Haupt

Another example, the picture above is an early one that can sit Advertisements for "remotely" controlling music playback equipment on chairs can help people control radios more conveniently.

The birth of the remote control

The idea of ​​a remote control existed long before remote controls were widely placed on the table in each of our homes. In 1893, inventor Nikola Tesla demonstrated a device that could send and receive radio signals in front of the National Electric Light Association in St. Louis. This device is not intended for home use, but for military applications. At the 1898 Electrical Exhibition in New York, Tesla successfully demonstrated a radio-controlled boat.

In the 1940s, devices that automatically opened and closed garage doors were invented, and remote controls became a feature in the home. But it wasn't until 1950 that the first television remote control was manufactured by Zenith Radio Corporation. Dubbed the "lazy bone," the device can turn the TV on and off and switch channels, although it requires a physical cable to operate. In 1955, Zenith debuted the "Flash-matic", the first wireless television remote control.

Remote controls became a feature of the home in the 1940s when devices were invented to automatically open and close garage doors. But it wasn’t until 1950 that the first television remote control was manufactured by the Zenith Radio Corporation. Dubbed the "Lazy Bone," the device can turn your TV on and off and switch channels, but it requires a physical cable to operate. In 1955, Zenith launched the first wireless TV remote control "Flash-matic".

At that time, the remote control used visible light, which was actually a flashlight. The core of the remote control was to illuminate four different receiving areas on the four corners of the TV to complete the forward movement. Channel change, backward channel change, mute and power switch functions. However, it is recognized in the industry that the popular infrared remote control is still inspired by "Flash-Matic" and mixed with Space Command's command encoding transmission method.

The birth of the first smart home computer

ECHO IV marks the invention of the first true smart home device. Invented by James Sutherland of the Westinghouse Electric Company, the giant computer consisted of four cabinets, took up an entire room, and weighed 800 pounds.

Sutherland designed it to be fully integrated into the home, placing keypads and control panels in different rooms to control various functions. ECHO IV, which has been running for ten years, can control televisions, alarm clocks, stereos, thermostats, air conditioners, and even record family finances.

While not commercially available, Sutherland's invention was an impressive piece of smart home technology that preceded similar devices by decades.

The first cooking app

Just a few years after the release of the ECHO IV, engineering giant Honeywell has launched a kitchen computer that promises to make cooking easier. This 16-bit kitchen computer is capable of storing recipes and comes with multiple pre-programmed programs.

When people think of computer hardware, they usually think of monitors, keyboards, or printers. Well, a kitchen computer might have the weirdest piece of “hardware” I’ve ever heard of – a cutting board. Yes, a cutting board! You read that right. And, it weighs an astonishing 150 pounds.

Kitchen computers are obviously designed for housewives who like to cook. However, any housewife who wanted this tool would have to spend a lot of money, considering the kitchen computer cost $10,600 when it was first introduced (remember, in 1965, you could buy about four new cars for that much money!) . But I will give you gifts, including a cookbook and an apron (don’t you laugh).

Because of this, this kitchen computer did not become popular quickly. Its novelty and quirky design may put off consumers, but it's also likely that its price tag will turn off interested parties. As you might expect, none of the device sold, but its concept was ahead of its time and may have paved the way for some of the weirder products on the market today.

For example, a frying pan that detects what’s inside, a toothbrush that “teaches” you how to brush through an app, a fork that records how fast you eat, a wearable that tells you when you’re stressed Devices, a plastic box that tells you if you need more eggs, a bottle that keeps track of how much water you drink, a yoga mat that tells you when you're doing a wrong move, a monitor that tells you when a tampon is full, Skipping ropes with built-in LEDs that display fitness data during workouts, wine bottles with Wi-Fi support... don't laugh! These things really exist!

X10 Protocol Finds a Way to Connect

In 1975, a real game-changer for smart home devices emerged with the development of X10. Communication protocols enable smart devices to communicate with each other for the first time ever. The technology was invented in the 1970s by a team of engineers at Pico Electronics in Glenrothes, Scotland, and relies on a home's AC wiring to operate. Since then, new technologies have opened up the ability to connect multiple devices together in the home.

Soon, X10 became the industry standard, first entering the U.S. market in 1978 in partnership with RadioShack. This protocol is used to operate RadioShack's signature "Plug and Play" devices and Sears "Home Control Systems." Although, X10 was not a perfect system—it could be slow, unstable, and lacked encryption—it paved the way for the contemporary smart home market.

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT)

Time continues to move forward, and the smart home device market has made great progress. Throughout the 1980s, products like motion-sensor lights and programmable home security systems became mainstream. In 1984, the National Association of Home Builders coined the term "smart house."

When the 1990s arrived, a new concept called "Internet of Things" (IoT) emerged. The idea is that objects can contain the ability to transmit and receive data over a network. In 1990, computer scientists John Romkey and Simon Hackett teamed up to build the first IoT device in the form of a connected toaster. However, the term was not coined until 1999 by computer scientist Kevin Ashton.

Hackett Showcase Toaster

This toaster works over TCP /IP networks connect to the Internet and are controlled through the Simple Network Management Protocol Management Information Base (SNMP MIB). It only has one control, which is to turn the power on, and the color of the toast is controlled by how long the power is on.

WiFi was invented in 1997. Other wireless protocols such as Bluetooth, Z-wave and ZigBee also emerged in the 1990s and were refined in the early 2000s. These network protocols broaden the possibilities and diversity of smart devices. Microsoft's Smart Home Vision, released in 1999, predicted many of the future features of the contemporary smart home, such as touchscreen panels, push notifications sent to handheld devices, and even retinal scanners for opening doors. These features are now widely used.

Smart speakers enter the market

In the 2010s, large technology companies such as Amazon, Google, and Apple began competing to create the next big smart device to capture the market.

In 2014, Amazon launched the familiar smart speaker Echo and controlled it through its smart voice assistant Alexa, which immediately caused a sensation in the industry. That same year, Apple released HomeKit, an all-in-one app that can control different functions in your home from a device such as an iPhone or iPad. Google launched Google Home, a smart speaker with a built-in voice assistant, in 2016 to compete head-on with Amazon. At present, except for Apple's HomeKit, which is relatively weak, Amazon and Google are both developing well.

The artificial intelligence revolution has arrived...

The future has arrived, but smart homes are not yet truly smart. (See: Qianjia Viewpoint: Why are smart homes not smart enough? )

The current smart home field still faces many problems, including privacy, security and interoperability. A world of connected IoT devices has become a reality, but it doesn’t operate as seamlessly as people imagine, nor does it necessarily bring convenience to people’s lives.

However, the market is growing. According to Statista, an estimated 130 million households worldwide have smart devices, and the smart home market is expected to be worth nearly $223 billion by 2027.

The next innovation coming to smart devices is the integration of language models (such as ChatGPT) with virtual assistants. An American company, Josh.ai, is already using the technology to build its own assistant. Last year, Amazon announced it was developing a large-scale language model that could be used to improve Alexa. If successful, smart homes could reach a whole new level of intelligence. The key question is whether consumers and even technology innovators are ready for it. Or even want it.

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