Originally Posted by
petercph
Does anybody know when frame builders and bike builders began to equip their bikes with straight forks, and when this new trend sort of took over?
IIRC, it was Colnago's marketing department that promoted straight-blade forks in the late 80s to early-90s. I suspect it was done mostly to eliminate a manufacturing step (raking the fork blades) and thereby sightly reduce the cost of production, more than anything else. With carbon fiber forks, this isn't an issue, so the blade shape choice is simply cosmetic.
Jan Heine did a comparison of straight and curved fork blades and decided that curved blades offer slightly better shock absorption than straight blades, but were otherwise quite similar.