USB hit the scene 30 years ago this month - we look back on its journey to standardization success

Whether you’re working at home, the office, or on the go, you’ll likely have an assortment of various USB cables, USB flash drives and others at your disposal, as they’re a staple piece of equipment these days - but it hasn’t always been that way.

Development of Universal Serial Bus (USB) began accelerating in the early-to-mid 1990s, with the aim of streamlining connections between personal computers with devices such as displays or storage devices.

Here’s everything you need to know about the history of USB.

The history of USB

Prior to the arrival of USB, users contended with an array of various connection interfaces, like serial ports, game ports, Apple Desktop Bus (ADP) ports, and more.

This cacophony of conflicting interfaces proved tiresome for consumers, and was in desperate need of standardization.

In 1996, the first USB design (USB 1.0) hit the market, and it eventually became the industry standard - albeit with a few notable exceptions. This launch was the culmination of a collaboration between a host of major tech companies, including Intel, IBM, Microsoft, and Compaq.

Indeed, a research team at Intel in 1995 spearheaded the development of the first integrated circuits designed to support USB.

The January 1996 launch of USB 1.0 offered users a base signaling rate of 1.5Mbps, a low bandwidth, low speed rate. At the higher end of the spectrum, it was capable of speeds reaching 12Mbps.

This doesn’t seem particularly powerful given what we expect today, but it did mark a major milestone. It wasn’t exactly an instant hit, however. A combination of both timing and power limitations meant that few USB devices made it to market and uptake was slow.

With the launch of USB 1.1 in 1998, however, things began to accelerate. It gained a major seal of approval from Microsoft that year. Notably, type-b connection ports began appearing on a range of peripheral devices.

Continuous improvements

The launch of USB 2.0 in April 2000 marked another major milestone, both in terms of popularity and performance. This latest iteration boasted higher signaling rates of 480Mbps.

Continuous improvements were made in the years following, particularly with the launch of USB 3.0. This saw the addition of a new architecture and protocol dubbed SuperSpeed, complete with backward-compatible plugs and cables.

All told, the SuperSpeed offered an operational mode for users boasting a rate of 5.0 Gbps.

USB 4.0 and the implementers forum

The specifications for USB4 were officially unveiled in August 2019 by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). Management of specifications was transferred to the USB-IF at the time of 3.o’s launch in 2008.

USB4 was based on the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, a term we’re all familiar with today, and supported up to 40Gbps throughput. Moreover it also offered backwards compatibility with USB 3.2 and 2.0.

Once again, this launch marked another significant milestone in terms of performance.

The rise of USB-C

Standardization was the name of the game during early development in the mid-1990s, yet by the turn of the second decade, this wasn’t quite the case. Cue the rise of USB-C - this iteration replaced the Type-A and Type-B legacy connectors.

USB-C boasts a far superior data transfer rate than previous generations, which naturally added to its popularity.

A significant portion of products out there on the market are now configured to support USB-C, which has made it far easier for consumers and reduced the volume of cables one has to lump around.

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