FYI: Websites like this have actually existed since late 2013 when Paul McMillan scanned the Internet for VNC images live during his talk and made the results available via a website in real-time. He did it again in 2014 at Defcon together with Dan Tentler and Rob Graham. Later that year people at CCC released a VNC roulette and they did the same again in 2015. And Shodan has been grabbing VNC images as well since 2014, made available at https://images.shodan.io
I consider this timeframe to be quite recent, for the reason that most of these systems, in ICS especially, have been installed for quite a bit longer. One of the biggest problems in that industry, as I'm sure you're aware, is the relatively very long lifecycle of equipment, and low rate of in-the-field updates.
Yes, you're right. Compared to how long these systems have actually been connected to the Internet it's only recently that we've started measuring the extent of their exposure.
