Everything you ever wanted to know about ISO paper sizing…
…but were afraid to ask. This kind of stuff pleases me more than I can possibly say. And some of it is even useful:
If you prepare a letter, you will have to know the weight of the content in order to determine the postal fee. This can be very conveniently calculated with the ISO A series paper sizes. Usual typewriter and laser printer paper weighs 80 g/m2. An A0 page has an area of 1 m2, and the next smaller A series page has half of this area. Therefore the A4 format has an area of 1/16 m2 and weighs with the common paper quality 5 g per page. If we estimate 20 g for a C4 envelope (including some safety margin), then you will be able to put 16 A4 pages into a letter before you reach the 100 g limit for the next higher postal fee.
Isn’t that handy? And my day was made by an offhand remark, a couple of paragraphs down, that German toilet paper is often A6 size.
[via BoingBoing]
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The property of being able to fold a sheet of paper in half and get the same proportions is incredibly useful for design work! Unfortunately, being on the west side of the pond, nobody seems to be aware of that fact, and A4 paper is quite difficult to find in the U.S. I will have to check out those possible sources at the bottom of the linked page. Sigh -- American arbitrariness at its finest.----- Nice link!
I also enjoyed the referenced link to the bloke who managed to talk about A4 paper and the Book of Revelations! Hilarious stuff.
by pete @ 06/08/2003 8:08 am • Permalink •
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