[zamadatix]

As far as I understood, both rates ultimately come from trying to map to video standards of the time. 44.1 kHz mapped great to reusing analog tape of the time, 48 kHz mapped better to digital clocking and integer multiples of video standards while also having a slightly wider margin on oversampling the high frequency.

44.1 kHz never really went away because CDs continued using it, allowing them to take any existing 44.1 kHz content as well as to fit slightly more audio per disc.

At the end of the day, the resampling between the two doesn't really matter and is more of a minor inconvenience than anything. There are also lots of other sampling rates which were in use for other things too.