Many many years ago. The initial designs for Bitcoin had a 'pay to IP' feature, probably to approximate traditional banking IP to IP transfer. It has not existed for almost 8 years now.
"This feature has been removed from Bitcoin Core as-of v0.8.0[1]." (Feb 2013).
"This feature has been removed from Bitcoin Core as-of v0.8.0[1]." (Feb 2013).