It really surprises me how much of that I actually understand. Thanks.

> > It stands for Universal Serial Bus. Don't ask me what that means. I haven't a clue.
> >
> > Vida
>
> Back in the older days of computing, you had various methods of communicating data down a single wire at a time.
>
> To anyone who doesn't quite see what I mean, see if you can get an older mouse or something - it has a number of pins/pinholes in the plug/socket on it. Each of those is a separate wire.
>
> Now then, each system despite having the same number of wires, did things differently. Both devices on either end had to accept the same data but this could be done in various ways.
>
> The USB was designed about 10 years ago (maybe a little more now) so that all devices had a single point of reference and a single specification to work with. The USB socket information specifies how data can be transmitted between devices, how fast it can go, whether power is required on either end - and more.
>
> It is not uncommon for devices to be USB now since it's easier and cheaper to build input/output devices working to USB than it was for the multitude of different sockets we used to have (parallel in all its guises, 9-pin serial, 25-pin serial etc)
>
> Oh, and the serial part means that all data is sent in a single line (like in a series of TV shows), so that data travels in like so:
>
> 1
> 1
> 0
> 1
> 0
> 1
> 0
> 0
> 1
>
> This is different to some of the other kinds that you can get, such as "parallel" where information bits arrive in conjunction like so:
>
> 11010110
> 10110101
> 10101010
> 10010101
> 11001001
>
> Instead of each unit sent being a single digit in a line, each unit is several bits (usually 8)
>
> I hope this explains where USB comes from... (any questions please ask)