Before USB came along in 1996, plugging things into a computer was chaos. Mice, keyboards, printers, joysticks and scanners all used completely different connectors. USB - short for Universal Serial Bus - was designed to replace all of them with one simple plug.
It mostly worked. But the original USB-A connector had a famous flaw: it only fits one way up, and you usually try the wrong way first. Twist it, twist it back, finally it goes in. The engineer who led the design at Intel, Ajay Bhatt, has joked that this is the part of USB he wishes they’d done better.
The good news is the newer USB-C connector - small, oval and reversible - fits either way around. It can also carry power, video and data through one cable. So a single USB-C lead can charge your laptop, plug it into a giant screen and back up your photos at the same time.
