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Digging around on the same page i stumbled into this which i think is a fun/interesting look at the history..though sounds like the ratio was in use even before its referenced here. Anyone know more about it? "letter, written in 1786-10-25 by the physics professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (University of Göttingen, Germany, 1742–1799) to Johann Beckmann, seems to be the oldest preserved written reference to the idea of using the square-root of two as an aspect ratio for paper formats" Excerpt of the English Translation - "I once gave an exercise to a young Englishman, whom I taught in algebra, to find a sheet of paper for which all formats forma patens, folio, 4to, 8, 16, are similar to each other. Having found that ratio, I wanted to apply it to an available sheet of ordinary writing paper with scissors, but found with pleasure, that it already had it. It is the paper on which I write this letter, but to which, because since by cutting some of its original form may have been lost, I also add an uncut original. The short side of the rectangle must relate to the large one like 1 : √2, or like the side of a square to its diagonal.
This form has something pleasant and distinguished before the ordinary [form]. Are these rules given to the paper makers or has this form spread through tradition? Where does this form come from, which appears not to have emerged by accident?
Honoured wellborn forgive me this freedom." https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/lichtenberg-letter.html |