"Whether made by the Gap or American Eagle, a pair of khakis with a 32-inch inseam and a 34-inch waist will fit you just about the same. A Panasonic phone will plug into the jacks in your home as easily as a phone from AT&T…. Today, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, there are close to 800,000 global standards. But go back a century and a half and you find an American economy in which there were literally none." —Turn of the Century [the standardization of screws]font color=”#000000″> (Wired)