Originally Posted by
unworthy1
Just to trivialize this thread a little: it occurs to me that for a brief period there was harmony between the 2 big component makers (Big C and Bigger S) and LOOK, the first (viable) clipless pedal...and it was all because they followed the LOOK standard for cleat design. So brief...there's no standardization in that area anymore!
(I still have a pair of the Shimano pedals that use the LOOK cleats, and they still work fine).
Well, it's pretty hard to blame Shimano for going off on their own. LOOK did not have a practical ATB system, so Shimano developed SPD. Then they they realized that they were paying LOOK lots of money for the road pedal technology and adapted SPD for the road. If LOOK had developed a practical ATB system before Shimano, they may have pretty much wrapped up the pedal market. But then, the Europeans didn't grasp the ATB market until quite late in the game. Campagnolo certainly made a mess of it.