Barrel jacks were awesome, they could go in any orientation. The only downside was the many different forms of barrel jack and lack of a standard. My question is: why isn’t there a cylindrical USB port? You would be able to rotate it any way you want within 360 degrees!
As a matter of fact, why isn’t there a cylindrical power plug? You’d get the benefits of a recessed plug like Type-C (EU) and Type-F (Schuko), you’d get the benefits of reversible plugs like Type-A (North American) and more so as you get 360-degree rotation, and it would be MUCH harder to break/bend compared to two flimsy pins (the UK plug has three thicker pins, but a chunky cylinder would be much more difficult to bend than the pins)
If it was a hollow cylinder (a bit like a vacuum-insulated water bottle), you could feasibly fit some small electronics in it, so things like flush low-power USB chargers and smart home sensors could be made.
The contacts would likely need to be outside the cylinder, similar to the “neutral” pins on Schuko plugs. There would likely need to be some plastic tabs to keep the power bits from touching the non-power bits, and then the socket itself would be able to freely rotate.
Actually, why don’t regular sockets freely rotate? Then it would solve all the issues of non-reversible plugs not able to go upside down and reversible plugs not able to go sideways.
Speaking of cylindrical objects, what happened to camcorders? They sound like the most comfortable and easiest way to record videos, with straps and everything. They were compact, portable, and wasn’t heavy as all heck.
this is my rant about cylinders, thank you for your time.
In a sense, we already have one. And it’s used on the vast, vast majority of desktop computers, it’s the standard for removable cords on electric kettles around the world, and it shows up in all data centers. I’m talking about IEC 60320, sometimes just called the “IEC connectors” or for one very specific connector, the “PC plug”.
For the task of attaching AC power to an appliance, this is probably the one with the greatest adoption worldwide. And there absolutely could be a wall-mounted version of these, the same way that datacenters essentially have power strips – ok, they’re RPCs lol – with these connectors.
Their only noticeable drawback is that the voltage can be anything up to 250v. So plugging 120v appliances into an Italian 230v outlet would be bad. But this family of connectors – formally called “couplers” – was meant to match current-capacity, where a mismatch would cause a fire due to overload. It’s still the user’s responsibility to check the voltage, in the same way that buyers have to check the type of battery they need for a remote control (eg AA vs AAA).
yeah those pc plugs are nice. if someone figured out a way for the cable to detect whether a device is 230/240V or 120V and make it stop giving power if there’s a mismatch, that would he really cool. sadly, that’s probably not possible, and even if it was, it wouldn’t be widely adopted. sad.
Or… we could just make appliances that are tolerant of the world’s different AC voltages. The world’s commercial electric grids only use a handful of voltages, and they’re all between 100-240v. Compressing the list by removing voltages which are within less than 10 volts, the list is quite short: 100v, 120v, 230v, 240v.
That’s all there is. And it’s exactly why most USB phone chargers list their input voltage as:
100-240. Today’s modern switch-mode power supplies can properly tolerate any of the world’s voltages, as long as you adapt the connector. The voltage side of things is mostly solved, except maybe for cheaper, motor-driven devices. But even that is changing to use inverter technology that can take almost any voltage.