- As noted at Wikipedia, wartime mechanisation and the requirements for standard parts to be provided for the new high technology of motorised transport, armour, and aircraft, drove further standardisation.

- The noted socialist and collectivist,[1] Herbert Hoover, provided the final push toward standardisation of weights, measures, and engineering components, as Secretary of Commerce.

It turns out that military needs and government legal authority and purchasing power can do much to promote standardisation which the free market cannot.

A subsequent case emerged during the Vietnam War during which the US Navy, a/k/a the transport and logistics arm of the US military forces, faced a critical problem in delivering supplies and materiel to very underdeveloped South Vietnamese ports. Though there'd been multiple attempts to standardise shipping around a single container size, this proved to be the ultimate nudge which established the TFU, or twenty-foot unit standard. (Now largely seen in its doubled form, the 40-foot shipping container.)

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Notes:

1. Sarcasm, gentle reader.