In the present era of the Internet of Things, we expect electronic devices to be small, portable, battery powered, and – especially important – interconnected through a network, so they can automatically and independently monitor our environment with their sensors and take action with their actuators to make adjustments where necessary. But is this actually something that only arose after Mark Weiser proposed his vision of ubiquitous computing in a widely read article in the September 1991 issue of Scientific American [1]? The answer is no, and if you would like to know why, I invite you to take a trip in time with me back to the world of the Hewlett-Packard Interface Loop in 1981.