Are You Plugged Into USB? Quiz Of The Week

The humble USB (Universal Serial Bus) connector hit the news this week as Apple predictably declined to use the standard Micro-USB connector in its new iPhone 5.

Apple is using a connector the same size as micro-USB, but reversible, to replace the clumsy broad iPhone dock connector. Others are going with the flow and meeting the idea of using micro-USB as a charging standard which could reduce the amount electrical clutter like phone chargers we produce

USB – a universal power supply?

Since it first appeared, USB has continually surprised with its capability. USB Flash drives have pretty much replaced every other kind of storage in everyday life (except Dropbox and other cloud services), and become a source of serious data leaks for us to report.

But that is just the start.

The need to power small devices meant it was given the ability to carry current. Coupled with its ubiquity, this has made USB the closest thing we have to a universal power supply (with power-over-Ethernet coming a close second).

The amount of electricity USB can carry has crept up with each version of USB, up to the current 3.0 specification. And the number and variety of devices has increased even faster.

A random top-ten list of USB-connected gadgets we just Googled up, includes slippers, a George Foreman grill, a vibrator, and a missile launcher.

Sadly, none of these devices feature in this week’s quiz (otherwise we would not have mentioned them here). Our quiz is a brain stretching romp through the history of a mighty IT innovation: USB.

Try the quiz

And if you like it, try some of our others…