Alas, I remain wifeless. Just me and the goats…
It’s interesting to note where lots of manufacturer R&D time and dollars have been spent, because often that provides some insight into the underlying technical issues and constraints.
The ‘holy grail’ of GA piston engine ignition systems remains, of course, catching up with the 1980s and electronic ignition. (Plus no lead AVGAS…) Some ‘no moving parts’ electronic ignition systems for GA piston engines are making their way through the glacial certification process – a couple have made it through. Meanwhile, for almost all of the piston GA fleet for the near future …
It’s obvious that lots time and money has been spent on trying to get the spark plug to spark at the lowest possible voltage. As you (OA) have noted, one of the variables in the formula that determines the voltage at which a spark will jump a gap relates to the surface area of the conductors at the gap. Hence the manufacturers have gone to the trouble of tooling up to produce “massive dual electrode” plugs, “massive triple electrode” plugs, “massive extended dual electrode” plugs, “single fine wire” plugs and “double fine wire” plugs, as well as use different ‘unobtainium’ materials for the electrodes.
Yes: some of this can be attributed to ‘new toothpaste’ syndrome and the propensity of people to believe that ‘new’ and ‘different’ is always ‘better’. But note that nowhere near the same amount of time and money has been put into the rest of the standard, steam-driven GA ignition system. The innards of magnetos have been the same for half a century or so. So have the distributor caps and plug leads.