Despite my fear, there have been no flames in my mailbox after my posting that Campy engineering was questionable at times. It is a nice group, this list.
Of course, we can love the stuff all the same. Traditional Campy parts are like Bugatti motor cars: Designed and engineered by people who had very little formal engineering training. The brilliance is that it all worked so well nonetheless. Both cases probably are among the last true artist/craftman/engineer types in the spirit of Da Vinci to head a major manufacturing business. Of course, stress testing and vector analysis were not part of their repertoire.
In France, a lot of people came from an aerospace background into cycling and had a much better understanding of materials. The Stronglight 49D cranks were made almost unchanged between the mid-1930s and the mid-1970s... while Campy and the racing community took until the mid- to late-1950s to adopt alloy cranks altogether.
Finally, I think we'd love Campy NR cranks all the same, even if they had stress relieved the spider and made the arms a bit thicker in 1970. The early versions would be worth more, of course! :)
Jan Heine, Seattle Who now has to get back to work despite this all being a lot of fun.