The Oil Drum

But there is: essentially, a logistics curve
says that the growth of [take your choice:]

  * number of trans-Atlantic voyages of
    discovery before 1700,
  * number of Hitchock films,
  * quantity of oil produced,

tends to increase based on previous actions, but
is held back by the increasing amount learned or
the increasing difficulty of finding and doing.

Mostly, people look at it as an `S' shaped
growth curve.  In biological models, the maximum
comes from the carrying capacity of the niche.
It is somewhat odd to see linearization.
Usually, graphs are for an `S' or a bell.

I don't know of an equal mechanical argument for
an oil-based Gaussian.  The mechanical argument
for a Gaussian is that a central value has
errors that are equal on both sides and that
occur less frequently the further away from the
central value.  Gauss invented the curve for
analysing astronomical observations.  He figured
that a celestial object was in a defined orbit,
but that astronomers made mistakes or lacked
good equipment, but did not try to sway their
observations one way or another.

A 15 year old book,

    The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures
    Dynamics of Evolution and Technological
    Change in Transport by Arnulf Grübler
    reprinted 1999, ISBN 3-7045-0135-2

gives examples of numbers of cars registered,
kilometers of roads blacktopped, and the like.
It uses logistic curves extensively.

Theodore Modis wrote a book on logistic curves
called "Predictions" (that is where I got the
choices listed above). That book was copyright in
1992, ISBN 0-617-75917-5

Modis quantified the uncertainties in
determining logistic curve fits, given just the
beginning of a curve.  This could be useful.