I deviced to take apart an orignal Nikon F 35mm camera today, to see
what's inside.

About 5000 parts is the answer, for a completely mechanical 35mm camera.

There were easily hundreds of screws, mostly of differnt types and clearly
no concept of standardized parts.

I took the rest apart with a hammer and pliers. The magnesium? body was
pretty brittle so the hammer worked great.

The thing was clearly overly complex for what it does, cleary not designed
to be easily serviced, and clearly built to use as many different
components and specialized tools as needed.

Does anybody know if these were designed to simply create lots of busy
work for people? I think the basic design was from the late 1950s this
this particular one being made in the early 1970s.

I've seem some German rifles that were made this way too, with as many
parts as possible crammed in, none of which were even truly needed.

What's the deal with this? When did this rediculous fad finally go away?

Old VCRs used to be overly built the same way with too many mechanical
parts.

Has anybody come across any other products, new or old that just appear to
be some sort of socialist work program, and not about making a machine
that works, at a reasonable price and that can be easily serviced?