Opening up my cache of computer cables that I have hoarded, I was awed by the miniaturization process that had taken place over the last 4 decades. Not quite dramatic as per the 1989 movie where the kids got shrunk, but still it was amazing.
When I first joined the rat race in 1979, all PCs were desktop and printers were dot matrix – connected via a Centronics (printer end) and a DSUB25 connector (PC end).
These also had a set of 9-pin RS232 connector each. The serial data transfer via these 9-pin ones was supposedly much slower than the 8-bit parallel mode of the former two.
Then in the late 1990s, the USB was introduced, with very substantial shrinkage in connector size. Thereafter, came the mini-USB connector, and then the micro-USB connector. All these may vanish altogether one day.
Punny Memories 