Were leather gaskets used to facilitate restoration?

Several recent MMD contributors have referred to the placement of
leather, newspaper, buckram, etc., between deck boards and pneumatics,
the purpose being to facilitate removal for restoration.  While I agree
it certainly helps, I'm hard put to believe that the makers of the
various actions were so forward-thinking as to specifically engineer
their designs to permit rebuilding many decades in the future.

Is there any evidence (company records, former employee recollections,
whatever) to support this conclusion? It seems to me that manufacturers
were far too busy keeping up with their competition to worry about
designing for rebuilding by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of
their customers.  Restorability would make a weak selling point then, as
now, and I'm not aware of any other product that was specifically
designed with ease of repair in mind.  There had to be some other
advantage to building it that way.

Rebuttals?  Examples?  I'd like to know more.

Dan Harrett