and "Titanic's original design called for 64 lifeboats. That number was later cut in half, then nearly halved again. The ship's owners felt that too many lifeboats would clutter the deck and obscure the First Class passengers' views." .. it wasn't the designers' faults.
By then people were used to it. Rinse and repeat someting enough (especially at formative ages) and it doesn't matter if it makes sense, people will stick with the idea it's particularly worth doing (eg: other notable major "Christ Mass" traditions). Once something is considered a "classic" it's easy to find people to spend money keeping the tradition that way.
Unfortunately tech companies (etc) regularly patent things not because they are possible or because they are working on them but for other reasons (eg: to profit if someone works it out, to block others from developing things, as wild "just in case we need it in 30 years", etc). Just registering a patent means almost nothing about the future chance of things happening. Because the patent system is broken.
I steam eggs myself (see attached image for times). As it is much less potentially messy and I find there is an issue when boiling of "when to start timing". Is it when you add the eggs or when the water gets back to the boil.. etc. Also, always put eggs straight into a bowl of cold water when you take them out.