On March 10, 1876, 150 years ago, the first telephone call was made, a milestone that forever changed our way of communicating. “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you,” was the phrase that the Scottish inventor and scientist, Alexander Graham Bell, conveyed to his assistant, Thomas Watson, just three days after patenting his invention, which progressively relegated the telegraph, used since 1844. Quickly, that system became popular to become a mass communication medium that we all carry in our pockets today.

Carrying three chargers with you – one for your mobile phone, one for your tablet and one for your laptop – is a common nuisance (and a mess of cables) for European citizens that the European Commission is proposing to eliminate. It's not just the inconvenience of carrying this many cables, it's also the environmental cost of making them and also disposing of them at current consumption rates. On Thursday, Brussels proposed revising a European directive to force manufacturers of smartphones, tablets, computers and game consoles to use the same charging technology.