1972-1980: The Early Years
The term “telecommuting” was first coined in 1972 by Jack Nilles. At that time, Nilles was working remotely on a complex NASA communication system. He told people what he was doing was “Telecommuting”, and the phrase was born.
When did telecommuting became popular?
Although formalized corporate telecommuting processes grew in popularity throughout the eighties, telecommuting was unavoidable when worldwide internet users reached 400 million in 1999.
When did working remotely start?
The History of Telecommuting
While modern-day remote work policies were formulated and adopted by companies after 1999, it predates even the personal computer. In 1979 five IBM employees were allowed to work from home as an experiment. By 1983, the count rose to 2000.
