Michael Aldrich
Michael Aldrich was an English inventor who in 1979 connected a modified domestic television over a telephone line to a real-time transaction processing computer, a system he called teleshopping.
What they did and why it matters
Aldrich demonstrated online ordering long before the web, showing that remote orders could flow directly into a seller's systems. His Redifon system let users place orders from a television connected to a computer, and it was sold mainly for business-to-business use in the 1980s, with early trials for grocery shopping by elderly customers. The idea that an order placed remotely becomes an electronic transaction ready for processing is the start of every e-commerce fulfillment workflow. His work is an early precursor of the order feeds that today flow from store platforms into a 3PL's order management system.
Events
Sources
- Michael Aldrich (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org
- Inventor's Story (Michael Aldrich Archive) aldricharchive.co.uk