Long time reader of your blog, thanks for doing what you do!

So I've been into "connector technologies" (if that's a thing) for a while -- more specifically I really admire the simplicity of edge connectors that nowadays are basically free (except the higher amount of metal than traces, (gold?) plating etc.). Anything you'd like to add about these sort of connectors from this era? Were they reliable in mating-cycle sense? Could you just casually insert them or was there a specific process? Was there a standard?

As you can see I don't have a precise question, I'm looking more towards the considerations that an engineer at that time would have to take into account. Unfortunately it's not very easy to google this these days.