Did you know that the electrical outlet was invented 121 years ago? A man named Harvey Hubbell II came up with a way to connect electrical appliances back in 1904. The three-pronged outlet for added safety was a requirement in homes by 1974.
Now we have USB ports. Any tiny device you may order online or off the rack at the home goods store since they became popular around 1996 probably has a USB connection.
Just today I needed to charge three different devices using a USB-C port. Each device comes with a warning to only use the charging equipment that comes with it, but I don’t believe there is a person alive who doesn’t use their phone charger for their latest recreational gadget.
There also isn’t a person alive who hasn’t left the charger at home.
The advancement of technology over the decades has left many people with junk drawers filled with old electrical cords and funny-looking plugs that don’t seem to match anything. But we never throw them away, because as soon as we do, the device they came with pops up someplace else, and ends up being unusable without something to give it juice.
The challenge with a USB port is making sure you have prong A in the right direction to place in slot B. It’s shaped like an oval, or it may resemble a flipped pancake with the top tapering toward the bottom. The plug often has horizontal lines on it to help identify which end should be up (particularly helpful for the elderly or vision impaired), though some have the marks on both sides. There is no better way to start your day on a downward slope than to misjudge your USB plug before you’ve had your morning coffee.
Once you plug in a device, you may see a series of lights letting you know how close to ready your gadget is to use. The origin of this design may be based on the “Christmas Tree” array at the starting line in drag racing, with the growing number of lit dots signaling you are nearly at a full charge. The minute that last light comes on, you’re at the ready to go with your coffee (which, hopefully, has not grown cold).
The hardest part, as Tom Petty put it, is the waiting, in this case for the device to charge. Sometimes it takes an hour or longer. We willingly conduct our home lives around watching the status of our gizmos as they draw energy from our outlets or power strips.
In fact, if you have bought a power strip lately, you’ll notice fewer electrical outlets and more USBs. It seems we charge more things than we leave to the regular unending flow of electricity.
I have one device which still functions on one out of four lights, and I am required to press the power button and check for lights before I use it. There is a sense that all is right with the world when you see that you can still function because your device has one light left on it.
Our old fogey two- or three-pronged outlets never provided this much amusement. You simply gave a little shove, introducing the prongs to the slots, and that’s all there was to it.
Today our USB collection includes a few different versions of regular or micro-sized connections, and these are expected to whittle down to fewer recognized versions over the coming years. At least until the next idea comes along.
Of course, there are electrical charging stations for vehicles now, which would make Mr. Hubbell spin in his grave. On all four charging lights. The dominant edition of this type of plug belongs to Tesla, with other makers looking to use their model. They look more like the old outlets.
Have we come full circle? No. Just creating new ways for prong A to meet slot B.
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