Jerome & Elizabeth Moos wrote:
.....I've long said that the technically correct ISO BB standard would have been Swiss, since it was metric, and had the correct LH thread o on the fixed cup. But of course that decision was made based on market share, not technical logic. At least the English thread anointed ISO did happen to have the "correct" LH fixed cup as well.
It's important to remember that the purpose of standards is to normalize what most people are doing already, not to determine what's best and try to force everyone to do it. That almost never works. On rare occasions when it's been attempted, people just ignore the standard and adhere to some kind of de facto standard, which is established by everyone immitating some common practice.
French dimensions are a good example of an attempt to create a standard apart from common practice. We all know how well that went!
As for BBs--is the ISO standard based on British dimensions the only one? I'm away from home and my books, so I can't check. There's no reason why there can't be multiple standards for some type of item.
Steve Maas
Göteborg, Sweden