I wonder if the machines back then were just as capable of using an accordion pattern, but mapmakers and printers thought there were advantages to the patterns

I wonder if the machines back then were just as capable of using an accordion pattern, but mapmakers and printers thought there were advantages to the patterns they used, either practical or aesthetic? When I was a kid, family and friends marveled at my uncanny ability to fold up a map perfectly. The secret was simple: I let the map fold itself. I'd find the one fold that went the same direction all the way across the page, and start there. Then the one fold that went in one direction across the folded map, and fold it next. And so on. As long as no one had mis-folded the map before, it seemed pretty easy. But I'd see everyone else ignoring what the map was telling them, just going at it arbitrarily and making a mess. Later I got into ham radio and applied the same principle to my wiring, especially when I wound my own transformers. Instead of pulling and twisting the wire every which way, I'd let the wire show me where it wanted to go. And instead of holding the transformer core still and forcing the wire around it, I would rotate the core like a spool to take up the wire. This principle still serves me today, as I seem to be one of the rare people who never has any trouble with MacBook Pro power supply cords! I cringed when I watched a colleague wind up the cord for a brand new MBPR. He opened the ears on the charger, grabbed the cord and pulled it hard around them all the way. So he was not only stressing the wire from the extra force, he was putting a twist into it through its whole length. Instead, I wind it the way I used to wind transformers: I let the wire dangle loosely, and then I rotate the power block like a spool with one hand, gently guiding the wire with the other so it wraps loosely and without any longitudinal twist. So that's how map-folding saved my power cords.