Why might a participant in the options market in the 1970s have chosen to use Black's sheets or another material implementation of the Black-ScholesMerton model? One factor could have been the authority of economics. Financial economists quickly came to see the Black-Scholes-Merton model as superior to its predecessors. It involved no non-observable parameters except for volatility, and it had a clear theoretical basis, one closely linked to the field's dominant viewpoint: efficient-market theory.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 724