History
of paper sizes:
Ever
wondered why A4 size is called A4 or what is the history behind “legal size” of
paper or what is the relation between A4 and A3?
A4
paper is the standard paper size used worldwide except US, Canada, and Mexico. The
key feature of A Series paper size is that A4 (21cm x 29.7cm or 8.25” x 11.67”)
is half the size of A3. A3 is half the size of A2. A2 is half the size of A1
and A1 is half the size of A0. A0, the largest in the range at 84.1cm x 118.9cm
is exactly 1m2 of paper. The aspect ratio (Height : Width) remains the
same in all sizes of A series which is 1 : 1.4142 (Lichtenberg Ratio). It goes
from A0 to A10. There are other series like B series, C series based on this
same principle but having different paper sizes. US uses paper sizes of
“letter” 8.5 inch x 11 inch (about 21.5 cm x 27.9 cm), “executive”, “legal”
etc.
In
Bologna, Italy, in the year 1398, a marble tablet inscribed with the outlines
of four sizes of paper [small, medium, large, and extra-large] was placed in a
public place to serve as a guide for the sizes of paper manufactured in that
region of Italy. Centuries later, in 1786, physics professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
of Germany noted that in a paper having a height-to-width ratio of the square
root of two (1:1.4142), the aspect ratio was still same, i.e. 1:1.4142, when
paper was cut into two. This helped in reducing the wastage while cutting the
paper.
Paper
official metric standard is based on a German standard originally from 1922 DIN
(Deutsche Institut für Normung) standard no. 476. In 1975, A series sizes
became an ISO Standard 216 and the official United Nations document format. It
was proposed for an early draft of ISO 216 to recommended the special size 210
× 280 mm (a format sometimes called PA4) as an interim measure for countries
that use 215 × 280 mm paper and have not yet adopted the ISO A series.
Incidentally, this PA4 format has a width/height ratio of 3:4, the same as
traditional TV screens and most computer monitors and video modes.
Letter
size: As far as can be determined, the 8½ x 11" letter size began to be
used in the United States during or shortly after the First World War. The
historic origins of the U.S. letter size format are relatively obscure. In 1921
a different 8 x 10½" format was established as the standard for U.S.
Government letterheads, and continued until the Reagan administration declared
in 1980 that the official paper format for the U.S. government would be the 8½
x 11" size.
Legal
Size: According to one story, during the time of Henry VIII (King of England:
1509-1547), paper was printed in 17″ x 22” sheets because this was the largest
size of mold that papermakers could carry. These large sheets were known as
foolscap. Legend has it that lawyers would simply cut the foolscap in half and
use the sheets for official documents. Lawyers liked longer paper so that they
could take more notes than would fit on a normal page. In 1920s/1930s at the
same time that the standard of 8 x 10½" paper was adopted in US, another
committee known as the Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes
recommended six completely different paper sizes. These sizes appear to have
been selected merely because of their being traditional. Our legal size paper
(8½ x 14" / 17 x 28") is also one of the papers specified by the
Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes.
