Do you know which was the first connected sensor in history?

The sensors are everywhere.For example, in your home.A few in the fridge, others in the heating system, several distributed in the overprotections of the electrical system, some other distributed in different thermostats and mobile devices such as smartphones or smartwatches...

In the cities we live surrounded by them, and the Internet of Things promises to have 50,000 million sensors recording data by 2020.As it is in the 21st century when they have dramatically reduced their price and connectivity, we think they are something new.

Nothing is further from reality. The first connected sensor in history dates back to 1874 , and involved French scientists, a mountain of 4,695 meters high and the novel shortwave technology.For the time, understand.

What are the sensors for?

In essence, a sensor is a tool that records a magnitude .

The old mercury thermometers were a perfect example not only of sensor, but also of indicator.In addition to recording the temperature using the mercury expansion in a tube, they showed it with the lines that were placed at different heights and that showed degrees.

Most of us have in mind the sensors that we are most often talked about.Everyday magnitudes such as temperature, humidity, speed, pressure...and little else.

However, there are hundreds of types of sensors .Solar radiation, presence inductive or strain gauges (which measure deformations) are only some of the least mentioned.

Nowadays a sensor without connection (even to a simple Bluetooth network or to a processor via cable) makes no sense, however, most sensors throughout history have been connected to absolutely nothing .And there are still millions of them who only measure and report closely, without using networks of any kind.For example, the pressure sensors seen in the photo above.

Pioneers in connected sensors

The first temperature sensor rule of history is attributed to Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, and had a very similar shape to what has been preserved until very recently.After trying several materials (the I + D of the time), he opted in 1714 for a glass thermometer with mercury inside.

Christin Thermometer (1743).Source: Sophia Brothers (Science Museum of London).

For more than a century, the thermometers were improving thanks to different scientists, usually French.And placed there where they could or were left.Until the moment when the first radio tests called the attention of these scientists, who wondered if it was worth to know the temperature of a remote point .

Most history books mention 1873 as the year in which Maxwell formulated the theory of electromagnetic waves; 1887 as the year in which Hertz discovered radio waves; and 1894 the year Tesla demonstrated in public that radio transmissions were viable.

Radio tests of 1914.Source: Wikipedia .

However, in 1874 -decades before the Eiffel Tower became a giant antenna with a cable run from the tip to the ground- a French team decided it would be fun that the Parisians knew the temperature it was at the top of Mont Blanc .As well as the wind speed, its direction and the height of the snow level.

Probably, the experiment ended up being a fiasco.Years were missing to understand how the short wave with which the data was sent worked, and Mont Blanc was no less than 550 km away.It was a milestone, and the meteorological station became the first connected sensor in history in 1874.

The world tends to wireless connections

The word wireless , is now fashionable, probably because during the 19th and 20th centuries our goal was to fill the world with cables.In 1926, long after the experiment of the Mont Blanc, Tesla said in an interview that the wireless was the future.

« When the wireless is perfectly developed, the entire planet will become a great brain, which in fact already is, with all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole...and the instruments that we will use for them they will be incredibly simple compared to our current phones.A man can carry one in his pocket. »

Radio stations (communications satellites) predicted by Arthur C.Clarke in 1957.

It is worth stopping for a few moments to think-from our comfortable perspective today, that it is easy to connect anything with everything else-which meant logistically placing a weather station on a mountain of 4,695 meters covered with snow more than 550 km from the reception point.

And it's worth it because, thanks to these almost absurd experiments, we have a level of technology never seen before.

Bibliography

• Secrets of the future , Arthur C.Clarke, 1964.


• How the world was one .Arthur C.Clarke, 1957.


• IoT technologies within the connected industry 4.0 , EOI, 2016.


• The origin of IoT , Bruno Cendon, 2017.

Images | Mont Blanc in 1874, iStock/CherriesJD, dekel