USB is the most universal connection to connect devices into computer such as digital cameras, printers, scanners and external HDD. USB is supported by the most popular operating systems, so it is called cross platform technology. Development started in 1994 by a group of seven companies;  Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Nortel.

First USB that was widely used was called USB 1.1. It was released in September 1998. Speed was 12 Mbit/s and was intended for higher-speed devices like disk drives. 1.5 Mbit/s rate was much lower and was used for devices such as joysticks or gamepads. iMac played major role at popularizing the USB.

USB 2.0 was released in year 2000 and immediately became official standard. USB 2.0 had backwards compatibility with its predecessor USB 1.1. This means that if you have newer USB 2.0 port, USB 1.1 devices can still be plugged in and will work perfectly. USB 2.0 support plug and play capabilities for most of the multimedia and storage devices. Speed is 480 Mbit/s which is 40-times more than in the previous USB 1.1.

In year 2000 was also released USB flash drive, a rewritable plug and play storage device that was first sold by IBM and Trek Technology companies.

USB 3.0 is the latest version. Its super speed data transfer rate is up to 4.8 gigabits per second. It also offers backward compatibility with USB 2.0 and ports. If you plug USB 3.0 into USB 2.0 port, the super speed will not work because it requires and USB 3.0 in order to reach the super speed. First devices to support USB 3.0 were released in 2010.

Next generation of USB called USB 3.1 was released in year 2013. The main improvement was boost of data transfer of up to 10 gigabits per second. Also new improvements and features were added like improved data encoding and efficiency, doubling the speed of generation 1 standard. To make it clear. 50 gigabyte Blu-Ray disc could be transferred with USB 3.1 in just 38 seconds.

Development of similar USB 3.1 has started in year 2014 and is called USB Type-C. It is a new small reversible-plug connector for USB devices. Type-C is supposed to be future-proof, comparing to Apple’s Lighting and Thunderbolt, it has the same idea. Type-C devices also has its power currents of 1.5 A and 3.0 A over the 5 V power bus in addition to baseline 900 mA. Type-C cables are meant to be active, electronically marked cables which contain a chip with an ID function based on the configuration data channel. This new type of USB is meant to be very popular in the close future.

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„USB 3.1 Have You Confused? Here’s Everything You Need to Know about the Standard.“ Digital Trends. N.p., 26 Sept. 2015. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.
(http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-usb-3-1-when-will-it-be-released-and-what-will-it-do-for-pcs/)