There is something to be said for these kinds of vestigial remnants of technologies past. I've always been fascinated by them, and in fact this kind of thing in computer folklore -- for example parts of the docs that explain something exists "for historical reasons" -- are one of the things that got me into programming. For example the "size_t" size has pretty funny origins which I'll leave as an exercise to the reader. But this kind of thing also has a linguistic component which is also equally fascinating to me. For example how we still "dial" a phone, which then "rings" for the person being "called".