[5] According to the original Ethernet protocol, a signal sent out over the collision domain must reach every part of the network within a specified length of time.
For the purposes of this rule, a segment is in accordance with the IEEE definition: an electrical connection between networked devices.
These connections generally use dedicated media for transmitting and receiving, simplifying collision detection.
You could create a network with more repeaters if you made sure the total number of lost preamble bits would not exceed the requirements of the receiving hardware and collisions would not pose a problem.
The standard requires generation of sufficient preamble bits to make sure a frame can be received when operated within specification limits (i.e. applying the 5-4-3 rule).
In a lab at DEC they knew how many bits their repeaters would lose and knowing this were able to create an 11 segment, 10 repeater, 3 active segment (11-10-3) network that maintained a round trip delay of less than 51.2 μs and a sufficient number of preamble bits that all end nodes functioned properly.