USB which stands for Universal Serial Bus is a standard for serial communications between computers and other devices. It was first introduced in 1996 and was jointly promoted by Intel, Phillips, US Robotics and Microsoft. USB was developed so that many different types of devices could be accommodated under a single common interface. Due to this capability, nowadays USB devices are the most popular form of plug and play devices. In short, a plug and play device is an external device which we connect to the computer either for data transfer or to provide additional capabilities to the computer. Normally plug and play devices are used along with additional software which acts as a link between the device and the CPU of the computer. This software is called the driver.
Many other standards exist for such connections like PS2, but USB devices provide a distinct advantage over other standards mainly due to two significant reasons.
First, the USB standard allows devices to be connected to the computer without needing to restart the computer. For many previous standards, the computer needed to be restarted before the device could be used. Secondly, the USB device takes...