Who used the term "IoT" first?

Concept: A technology term's origin is credited to the specific person and context in which it was first coined and documented — traceable through the original talk, article, or publication in which the phrase appears.

Application: In 1999, while working at Procter & Gamble on RFID-based supply-chain tracking, Kevin Ashton used the phrase "Internet of Things" in a presentation to P&G executives to describe a network in which physical objects, fitted with sensors and tags, are connected to the internet. He went on to co-found the Auto-ID Center at MIT, which developed RFID standards for this vision.

Later account: Ashton gave his own account of this origin in a 2009 RFID Journal article titled "That 'Internet of Things' Thing," recounting that he coined the phrase in that 1999 presentation.

• Steve Jobs' documented technology-industry work is centered on Apple's personal-computing and consumer-electronics products from the 1970s onward, rather than on 1990s RFID-based supply-chain-tracking terminology.

• No documented 1990s RFID- or supply-chain-terminology record names an individual called Bill Simpson.

• Documented technology-history sources attribute this 1990s RFID-terminology event to one specific named individual, not to an unattributed origin.