USB and the Great Cable Conspiracy

Let’s be honest. The modern world runs on tiny bits of wire, most of which you can never find when you need them. Many of us have a drawer full of them. An entire tangle of snakes that have somehow tied themselves in a nautical knot so sophisticated it could be studied by sailors and mathematicians alike. Each cable looks like it ought to fit something, but most don’t. At least, not anymore.

One is for your camera from 2008, another for a Bluetooth speaker you threw away in 2019, and at least three are simply mystery cables. We can’t bear to throw them out. We’ll need them, one day.

At the heart of this domestic chaos lies the Universal Serial Bus or ‘USB’ cable. The word “Universal” is ironic here.

The idea of the USB was born in the 1990s, a decade of optimism, grunge, and beige plastic computers. Back then, plugging anything into your PC was an act of faith. You’d crouch behind your desk, squinting at the many ports with names that sounded like military acronyms: RS-232, PS/2, LPT1 and, if you were lucky, you would find the right one, the cable would fit (albeit after some jostling and frustration) and eventually, something would work. Perhaps after a reboot… So, a group of big-brained engineers from seven companies (Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Compaq, DEC, NEC, and Nortel) put their heads together and decided that the madness must end. Their grand plan? One port to rule them all.

Thus in 1996, USB 1.0 appeared. It could transfer data at a blazing 12 megabits per second (fast enough to send a photo before your tea went cold!) and, miracle of miracles, it provided power too. Suddenly, the world’s devices didn’t need their own chunky power supplies. The computer would graciously donate some power through the same wire that transferred data. Revolutionary! And it was universal, sort of. Until you tried to plug it in.

You see, early USB had a personality quirk. A fifty-fifty chance of inserting the plug the right way up. Except somehow it was never the right way. You’d flip it once, twice, maybe a third time, muttering words unfit for polite society. It became a ritual: the sacred dance of the USB plug. Nobody knows how this happened. The probability gods were clearly mocking us.

USB 2.0, released in 2000, fixed a lot of things. It was faster at 480 Mbps. Practically warp speed at the time and it became ubiquitous. Every camera, MP3 player, and external hard drive had one. You could charge your early mobile phone from your computer, feeling futuristic and smug. The world embraced USB wholeheartedly, and we were promised a universal future, which, naturally meant more types of USB than ever before.

Soon came Mini-USB, then Micro-USB. Each “the next big thing” until it wasn’t. If you were alive in the late 2000s, you remember the absurdity of every device having a slightly different connector. The phone, the camera, the Kindle, the satnav… all needed their own cable, and they all looked identical when you were half asleep or trying to reach the back of whatever hardware you was trying to connect to.

The European Union, to its credit, noticed that the citizens of Europe were losing their collective sanity. So, in 2011, they gently suggested that manufacturers agree on one common charger to reduce waste and possibly prevent cable-related homicides. The phone companies nodded politely, adopted Micro-USB, and we enjoyed a brief golden age of compatibility. You could borrow your friend’s charger without feeling like you’d asked for a kidney.

But technology never sits still. Soon, phones needed faster charging, laptops wanted slimmer designs, and engineers yearned to transmit both 4K video and small talk over the same cable. Enter USB-C; the holy grail of connectors. Unveiled in 2014. It was reversible. Hallelujah (If you think I’m overreacting, wait until we get onto the subject of HDMI)!

powerful, and sleek. Finally, a connector that didn’t make you swear under your breath. It could carry data at dizzying speeds, deliver up to 240 watts of power, and even act as a video cable through clever “Alternate Modes.” For a brief moment, it felt like the prophecy had been fulfilled.

Of course, being human, we ruined it immediately.

The first problem was that USB-C looked the same on everything, but not all cables were created equal. One USB-C cable might charge your laptop, another might politely refuse. Some transferred 80 Gbps, others barely moved a file. The average user, who just wanted to print a photo or charge a phone, had to become an amateur electrical engineer. It was as if every petrol pump in the country used the same nozzle but dispensed a different type of fuel at random.

The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the nonprofit body that governs these standards, tried to impose order. They released diagrams, logos, and even certification programs but the damage was done. People were confused. You could buy two identical-looking USB-C cables; one might power a high-end gaming laptop, while the other wouldn’t charge a pair of earbuds.

The irony, of course, is that “Universal” still isn’t universal. Apple, that well-known maverick, clung to its proprietary Lightning connector for over a decade, ensuring every iPhone owner had yet another cable that only worked with Apple devices. The EU finally stepped in (again) and decreed that, by 2024, all small electronics sold in Europe must use USB-C, replacing all previous USB (USB 1.X & USB 2.0, which replaced serial and parallel ports and Type-A & B connectors, which came in standard, mini and micro sizes!!!) connectors as the industry standard. Apple sighed theatrically and complied, all while implying it had planned this all along.

I spent much of yesterday searching through my hoard for a USB Type-A to USB Mini-b cable without luck. I'm absolutely certain I had at least one.

Underneath the absurdities, though, the USB story is an oddly noble one. It’s an example of what happens when engineers genuinely try to make life simpler and then get blindsided by the laws of economics, marketing, and human stubbornness. Every iteration of USB, from the clunky rectangular plug to the sleek oval of USB-C, represents a negotiation between progress and practicality.

And it is progress. USB-C can replace HDMI, power bricks, and even ethernet ports. It can charge a phone, a laptop, and an electric toothbrush. (Don’t try that last one but technically, it could.) It’s elegant engineering: one port that can be anything, depending on what it’s plugged into. In a world where everything else seems to fragment and specialise, USB-C is quietly universal, even if we still can’t remember which side of the cable does what.

Yet there’s something deliciously human about the way USB has evolved. We never quite learn. Every time a new standard emerges, we declare, “At last! The final version!” and within a few years, another arrives faster, more efficient, and entirely incompatible with the last. It’s the same optimistic delusion that drives all technological progress: the belief that one more tweak will make everything perfect.

And perhaps that’s the charm. USB isn’t just a technical standard; it’s a cultural artifact. It’s a story of compromise, cooperation, and the occasional mild electrocution. It’s the reason you can sit in a café and charge your phone from a stranger’s laptop without starting an international incident. It’s the quiet glue of the digital world, the unnoticed servant that makes everything else work.

So, the next time you’re rummaging through that drawer of tangled cables, muttering about how none of them fit, take a moment to appreciate the miracle of it all. The very fact that billions of people, across hundreds of countries, can plug billions of devices together is astonishing. It’s messy, it’s inconsistent, it’s gloriously human.

USB may not have made the world tidy, but it did make it a possibility. And perhaps that’s as universal as it gets.

If you’re interested, here is a potted timeline of the release of the various USB generations:

If you want to get technical, the relevant standards (UK adoptions) are:

• BS EN IEC 62680‑1‑3:2025 — titled “Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power – Common components. USB Type-C® Cable and Connector Specification”.  
• Another is BS EN IEC 62680‑1‑2:2025 — titled “Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power – Common components. USB Power Delivery specification”.