Hannah Fry has a short video up on YouTube expressing her love for the A4 paper size. I think she's wrong, 8 1/2 by 11 is the only correct paper size. A4 just looks wrong. This is probably due to my 70 plus years of only seeing 8 1/2 by 11. Anyway, it prompted me to ask Google about the origins of these two formats. I have arranged the answers by year:
- 1660s: Dutch papermakers used wooden frames to pull paper from vats by hand. The 44-inch length matched the maximum comfortable reach of a worker's arms, which quartered down to 11 inches. The 17-inch width left room for watermarks, cutting in half to 8.5 inches.
- 1786: German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg first proposed the mathematical ratio (the square root of two) used for the A4 format.
- 1921 The U.S. Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes adopted 8.5 x 11 inches under Herbert Hoover's program to cut manufacturing waste.
- 1922: Dr. Walter Porstmann registered the A4 format as the DIN 476 standard in Germany, establishing the dimensions at 210 × 297 mm.
- 1975: The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted the A4 format as ISO 216.
- 1977: A4 became the standard letter format in 88 of 148 countries.
- 1980s: President Ronald Reagan made 8.5 x 11 inches the official size for all U.S. government forms.
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