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Standardization of threads started between private companies around the year 1800, and continued on mixed in with a bunch of other "competing" private company s

Standardization of threads started between private companies around the year 1800, and continued on mixed in with a bunch of other "competing" private company standards. Sick of the lack of a unified standard, William Sellers submitted a paper in 1864 proposing one standard based on an already popular form. Eventually the USG adopted this as a requirement in government contracts, was adopted as United States Standard thread, and later Unified Thread Standard. The standard is maintained by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and American National Standards Institute. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw_thread#History_of_standardization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw_thread#History_of_stan... Get the government to require a standard for all their software and anyone who wants a government contract will have to conform.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Further parts of that story: - As noted at Wikipedia, wartime mechanisation and the requirements for standard parts to be provided for the new high technology of motorised transport, armour, and aircraft, drove further standardisation. - The noted socialist and collectivist,[1] Herbert Hoover, provided the final push toward standardisation of weights, measures, and engineering components, as Secretary of Commerce. It turns out that military needs and government legal authority and purchasing power can do much to promote standardisation which the free market cannot. A subsequent case emerged during the Vietnam War during which the US Navy, a/k/a the transport and logistics arm of the US military forces, faced a critical problem in delivering supplies and materiel to very underdeveloped South Vietnamese ports. Though there'd been multiple attempts to standardise shipping around a single container size, this proved to be the ultimate nudge which established the TFU, or twenty-foot unit standard. (Now largely seen in its doubled form, the 40-foot shipping container.) ________________________________ Notes: 1. Sarcasm, gentle reader.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Further parts of that story: - As noted at Wikipedia, wartime mechanisation and the requirements for standard parts to be provided for the new high technology of motorised transport, armour, and aircraft, drove further standardisation. - The noted socialist and collectivist,[1] Herbert Hoover, provided the final push toward standardisation of weights, measures, and engineering components, as Secretary of Commerce. It turns out that military needs and government legal authority and purchasing power can do much to promote standardisation which the free market cannot. A subsequent case emerged during the Vietnam War during which the US Navy, a/k/a the transport and logistics arm of the US military forces, faced a critical problem in delivering supplies and materiel to very underdeveloped South Vietnamese ports. Though there'd been multiple attempts to standardise shipping around a single container size, this proved to be the ultimate nudge which established the TFU, or twenty-foot unit standard. (Now largely seen in its doubled form, the 40-foot shipping container.) ________________________________ Notes: 1. Sarcasm, gentle reader.