I'm trying to understand this. I thought one of the differences between 30 to 40 year old road bikes and road bikes in the last 10 years is that the modern bike has the handlebar tops and hoods roughly (very roughly) where the old school drops were (relative to saddle height). The idea being that old school bikes were ridden in the drops more (for which the brake levers were designed) and new school bikes are ridden more on the hoods until one wants to race or make aero gains in the drops. So, the old brake levers wouldn't really work well for riding on the hoods and weren't designed for it? Dunno... just seems like the old levers don't do a modern setup particularly well.

Of course, my bikes as a teenager had the brake lever extensions that allowed one to do a bit of braking from the tops but that were not particularly effective at braking.