When the Beatles are discussed on musician forums, someone always comes along to say that they don't get the adulation: "They're just another boy band."

For those of us who were racing in the '80's (or '70's, or even the '60's, like a few of us), the choices early on consisted of bikes with various cobbled-together component mashups that included products from brands such as Simplex, Huret, Cyclo-Benelux, GB, AVA, Magistroni, etc. (Imagine a world where you had to rely on components designed by French engineers and built by French workers!)

And then there was Campagnolo. It was obvious even at the time that everyone else was on the how-cheaply-can-we-make-this-and-get-away-with-it page, while Tullio Campagnolo was interested only in producing the best components imaginable.

For example: Campagnolo sold loose bearing balls in little stapled translucent bags, and guaranteed that the dimensional tolerance of the balls in that bag was 4 microns. But they warned against mixing balls from different bags, since they couldn't (or, in any event, wouldn't) guarantee that the mixed balls would achieve that 4-micron tolerance.

Obviously, Suntour and Shimano eventually figured out how to imitate and even surpass Campagnolo (in some components, anyway), But Campagnolo earned their reputation.