Why can you only plug a USB device in one direction? The inventor behind it explained why this is so. The reason behind it is pretty simple.
Anyone who has ever wanted to insert a USB stick or other USB device will have noticed that it only works in one direction. At least when we talk about USB-A. Because with USB-C it doesn’t matter anymore because it has a round shape.
But why is that so? Ajay Bhatt, widely regarded as the inventor of USB, has now explained why USB only works on one side. He explained this in a conversation at the time (via PCGamer). He is aware that “the biggest annoyance is reversibility.” Nevertheless, he defends the design decision.
The main thing was to save costs
What is the reason behind the decision? To keep development costs as low as possible, the team decided to use the iconic rectangular, pluggable design on only one side: if they could have used USB-A on both sides, twice as many wires and circuits would be required which would have meant that the development costs would have been twice as high.
At the time, Bhatt says his team was aware of the frustration that could be caused by the rectangular design compared to a round design. Many people will understand that. Today, if you want to plug a device into a USB-A port, it usually takes two attempts until you turn the stick or cable the right way around.
What was the other problem? The next problem was actually convincing a manufacturer to use 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 1998 iMac G3 was the first PC to feature exclusively USB ports for connecting external devices, three years after the introduction of the USB 1.0 standard, which enabled speeds of up to 12 Mbps.
There are now a number of variants and options for USB devices. The connections usually have different colors, but what do they actually mean? MeinMMO explains what’s behind the color coding:
Why do USB ports have so many different colors?