30 years of USB 1.0: The connector for (almost) everything
The success of the Universal Serial Bus grew from humble beginnings: on January 15, 1996, the first final specification was released.
USB-A sockets on a desktop PC.
(Image: heise medien)
With some inventions, it works like this: The idea sounds strange at first, then nothing happens for a few years, and suddenly the thing takes off. That's roughly how it went with the now ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus (USB).
30 years ago, on January 15, the “USB Implementer's Forum” (USB-IF), an industry association founded for this very purpose, released revision 1.0 of the Universal Serial Bus Specification, or USB 1.0 for short. But it wasn't until 1998, after the revised version USB 1.1 was released, that something happened: Apple launched the iMac, to which you could connect a keyboard and mouse via USB.
This was surprising at the time because USB was developed crucially by Intel and was considered clear competition to Apple's then far superior FireWire. Although Intel had announced the PC motherboard southbridge PIIX3 alias 82371SB with a built-in USB controller back in 1996 – at CeBIT, those were the days – it had a bug. The USB drivers in the then current Microsoft operating system Windows 95 were still very shaky; they only matured with Windows 98. And so Apple became an important midwife for USB, and USB practically only started with USB 1.1. Irony on the side: Apple wasn't even one of the seven companies in the USB-IF that participated in the specification.
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USB 1.0 and 1.1 described the Full Speed (12 megabits per second, Mbit/s) and Low Speed (1.5 Mbit/s) transfer modes, which are still usable today. In practice, a maximum of around 100 KBit/s and 1 MByte/s respectively were usable.
(Image:Â Apple)
Even today, USB 1.1 Low Speed is sufficient for connecting slow input devices like keyboards and mice. Some gaming mice with super-fast polling rates require USB 2.0.
Even though it started with clunky hardware, bad cables, buggy hubs, and shaky drivers, USB's success is phenomenal. The renowned professional engineering association IEEE recognized the now ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus as an “IEEE Milestone” and named Intel Fellow Ajay Bhatt as the author of the first specification drafts.
