Yesterday, I spent the day on a road bike with friction lever gears, and they worked perfectly. These are the gears I used for years and years in the 1980's with few problems, I enjoy the new(ish) style gear lever on the brakes, but please remind me, what was the problem with friction lever gears.
Not everything made yesterday is better. I'll assume you bemoan the move to index downtube shifters rather than that to brifters. Friction shifters went out the back door because indexing has two distinct advantages.
1) In traffic or other noisy places like tight pelotons you can't listen and hear if your chain is perfectly in gear. When things are quiet you make the small adjustments by ear. When noisy, you have to look down and that is dangerous, especially in the type of environment where you have to look down. I'll rather be in a peloton behind an indexed rider than a retro-grouch friction rider. Also, a slightly misaligned gear is dangerous when you have to get up and pedal hard. An indexed shifter does all that for you without fuss. Lots of people tell you they have, like a trombone player or violinist, developed perfect feel for where the lever should be and thus never make mistakes even in noisy environments. I've also heard that saying bless-you after a sneeze keeps the lions away.
2) The small mechanical improvement of indexing comes at no extra cost, no weight, isn't contrived, cant be seen, isn't bulky, is simple to maintain, rarely fails and makes a satisfying click like the safety catch going off on a 9mm parabellum.
Brifters are a natural progression from that and electronic switches on levers even better. Let's move on. Valve radios are quaint but I can't wait for 20 minutes for the thing to warm up. Inside toilets are also more comfortable than a drafty wooden longdrop in the garden.
