and Play initiatives assisted in building the first peripheral interconnect that would work with devices without requiring the PC to be dismantled. This vision of a sealed PC that could be extended with external devices was central to Intel's strategy of making the PC more like a consumer device. USB emerged as the lead contender for the interconnect standard interface, and an Intel team of engineers set out to create an industry standard. Intel's engineering standards were well known as being among the highest in the industry, driven by the company's adherence to careful development of technical specifications before setting out to design or develop a new product. As part of the engineering process, Intel engineers wrote detailed technical specifications during the early phases of design, to ensure the features were well understood and agreed upon. Since Intel's products usually involved complex chip designs, errors or omissions in the design or features could prove costly if done without the appropriate rigor and review that came along with the detailed engineering reviews that accompanied the design process. In the early 1990s the initial USB specification was spearheaded in IAL, driven by a small team of software and hardware architects & engineers. The engineers were scattered across Intel campuses in Oregon and California. In Oregon, the chief engineers of the USB project in IAL included Brad Hosler, Shelagh Callahan, John Howard, John Garney, and Kosar Jaff, all based in the Hillsboro Oregon Intel site. While the IAL-based USB team was primarily located in Intel's campus in Hillsboro Oregon, the USB project also included a team of chip designers in the Intel Chipset Group (Peripheral Components Division) located on the Intel campus in Folsom, California. The partnership between the IAL engineers and the chipset engineers was crucial in the development of the original USB specification. Throughout the development of the USB 1.0 specifications, the IAL engineers worked closely with chipset designers (inside and outside Intel). Together, the engineering teams in Oregon and California were tasked with building the world's first USB based computer by designing and manufacturing the USB Host Controller. USB host controller design A critical component of the USB design was the interface between hardware and software, which was the domain of the USB Host Controller, the brains behind the interconnect that all USB devices communicate with. The USB Host Controller was embedded in the South Bridge chip, and was designed