WOW! Chuck and I agree on something!
OK, enough of the snarkiness, and apologies to Chuck!
One of the biggest problem in the world today is engineers continously justifying their existence by re-engineering EVERYTHING every few years to justify their own existences and the bean counters too.
They, as a group just don't understand the idea of "economy of scale" as did their previous counterparts. Defined, it means that the longer we can use an existing item and make more of them, the less the engineering, tooling, stocking, and advertising, costs per item become. Not to mention less area for retailers to have to warehouse all of this odd ball crap!
Look at the common "screw in" home light bulb, it is still using the "Edison base," you guessed it, it was designed by Thomas Edison! It still works, it does what it was designed to do (back in the 1800s!), it is universal, and has survived iterations in: incandescant (as it was designed for), CFL, and modern LED bulbs. Look at the wall plug/ socket design, same one for about 80+ YEARS!
Cars from the 1950s up until the designers had to justify their existence in the 90s, made do with 1157, 1034, and 1156, tail, turn signal, and stop lights. The engineering, tooling, retail and wholesale stocking and distribution chains were well established, but, go into a parts store now, how many ways do we have to make a freaking light bulb to do the same job?
Small block chebbies, designed in 1953-4 used the same rocker cover (one small change, but, a new dual pattern bolt location in 1958), intake manifold, exhaust manifold, distributor, water neck, timing cover, and oil pan gaskets (and even when they switched dipstick locations to the other side, due to clever engineering, allowed the continous use of the same gasket!).
Almost all of the same size and length fasteners were in continous use too!
Now look at A/C, D/C charger adaptors, no standardization! Variations in voltages, AC, or DC, pin sizes, spacing, and polarization lugs. Co axial types not only use about 6 diameters, but differing + - polarization schemes as to whether the inside or outside is positive or negative! I have a box of about 50 of these adapters, I can't bring myself to toss/ recycle (not enough of one material to make that practical) any of them because just maybe I may need one out of that box!
Now, get into my latest project, 1987 Turbo V-6. It contains metric and American fasteners, fine and coarse threads in about 30 variations!
We did an injector replacement a few years back on a 90s Toyota pickup truck.
I called my local parts wholesaler, they said:"dealer only." Dealer said "we got 'em." When my runner got there, I was informed that they used about 14 different injectors in THAT YEAR/MODEL truck! ALL DIFFERENT IN: 2 pin, 3 pin, rectangle, round, D shaped, or square plugs, some also identified by plug color too! NONE INTERCHANGABLE! Of course we had to pay up front, and go back to pick them up in about a week!
This shit really started when Richard Nixon, in a short sighted attempt to keep Werner Von Braun and his German team of captured and defected to the U.S. team of rocket scientists happy by working with the common to them metric system. It was soon figured out the tool companies could force us to buy complete new tool sets to make millions off us! So, soon after, other marketers decided that nothing should be standardized any more, and manufacturers could get richer.
This rant has gone on too long, but you get the picture!
TIMINATOR