Why can you only plug a USB device in one direction? The inventor behind it explained why this is the case. The reason is quite simple.
Anyone who has ever tried to insert a USB stick or another USB device has likely noticed: It only works in one direction. At least when we’re talking about USB-A. With USB-C, it doesn’t matter anymore, as it has a round shape.
But why is that? Ajay Bhatt, widely regarded as the inventor of USB, explained why USB only works on one side. He explained this back in a conversation (via PCGamer). At that time, Bhatt was working with a team at Intel on the standard.
He was aware that ‘the biggest annoyance is the reversibility.’ Nevertheless, he defends the design decision.
It was mainly about saving costs
What is the reason behind this decision? To keep development costs as low as possible, the team decided to use the iconic rectangular, plug-in design only on one side: Because if USB-A could have been used on both sides, it would have required twice as many wires and circuits, thereby doubling development costs.
According to Bhatt, his team was aware at the time of the frustration that the rectangular design could cause compared to a round design. Many can relate to that. Because today, if someone wants to plug a device into a USB-A port, it often takes two attempts until they have turned the stick or cable the right way.
What was the other problem? The next problem was actually convincing a manufacturer to adopt the new USB standard. And that took a lot of effort, Bhatt explained: ‘It took us some time to show that this technology is indispensable.’
Where did the USB port first appear? The iMac G3 from 1998 was the first PC to have only USB ports for connecting external devices, three years after the introduction of the USB 1.0 standard. The first model of the iMac G3 had
- a 233-MHz PowerPC G3 processor
- an ATI Rage IIc graphics card
- a 4-GB hard drive
- a tray-loading CD-ROM drive,
- two USB ports
- a network port
- an infrared port
- integrated stereo speakers
- and headphone jacks.
A later model then used a faster graphics card from ATI.
Nowadays, there are numerous variants and options of USB devices. The ports now come in different colors, but what do these actually mean? MeinMMO explains what the color coding represents:
