History of the Thumb Drive

Back in 2000, at a trade fair in Germany, “an obscure Singapore company unveiled a solid-state memory chip encased in plastic and attached to a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector,” writes Hallam Stevens.

That device — now known as a thumb drive, flash drive, memory stick, or USB stick — was an instant hit that “changed the way computer files are stored and transferred,” Stevens says.

This article traces the history of the thumb drive along with the sometimes competing claims related to its origins.

Read more at IEEE Spectrum. 

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