Why do standard resistor values follow the E-series pattern?

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Jdo300
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Hello Everyone,

I was spending some time today organizing my resistor collection into drawers when this nagging question came to mind. How did they come up with the standard resistor values that we have now? There must have been some kind of rationale to it as one would normally expect the values to be even multiples of 1, 2, 5, or 10s. Does anyone have any insight into this? Let's here what you all think as I'm sure I can't be the first person to wonder about this.

Thanks,
Jason O
 

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