Original USB plug wasn’t reversible because being cheap was more important

The Universal Serial Bus standard came into being more than 20 years ago, ushering in the USB era, which has been defined by two things: a common, ubiquitous standard for connecting peripherals to PCs, and the daily annoyance of trying to plug things in the right way. USB inventor Ajay Bhatt has talked to NPR recently, as spotted by Boing Boing, and given some background on why the plug took the form that it did and what its creation was intended to achieve.

Leading Intel’s team as part of a multi-company effort, Bhatt was seeking to address the rather gruesome mess of device-specific cables, plugs, and connectors that people had to deal with back in the ‘90s. As he’d previously mentioned in an interview with PCWorld, his interest was…

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