One of the early examples of this sort of thing was herbaria sheets … the blotting paper sheets on which herberia specimens are stored. There was a big battle between the Smithsonian and Harvard over which size they should be. Samples would be routinely prepared by collectors and sent to multiple institutions, or exchanged between institutions, so everyone having the same size cabinets and thus the same size sheets would be important. The American Museum and the New York State museum got into the act. Harvard did some strong arming stuff and won. Cabinets were discarded and rebuilt in New York. There are people in Botany who are still not over this, and it all went down before the Civil War.