Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Bob Frost" 
<bob@f...> wrote:
> Tom,
> 
> The whole world, apart from USA and Canada, uses the ISO paper 
sizes, not 
> just UK and Europe.
> 
> They are basically the German DIN standards from 1922, which were 
adopted by 
> most countries such as Belgium (1924), Netherlands (1925), Norway 
(1926), 
> Switzerland (1929), Sweden (1930), Soviet Union (1934), Hungary 
(1938), 
> Italy (1939), Uruguay (1942), Argentina and Brazil (1943), Spain 
(1947), 
> Austria (1948), Romania (1949), Japan (1951), Denmark and 
Czechoslovakia 
> (1953), Israel and Portugal (1954), Yugoslavia (1956), India and 
Poland 
> (1957), United Kingdom (1959), Venezuela (1962), New Zealand 
(1963), Iceland 
> (1964), Mexico (1965), South Africa (1966), France/Peru/Turkey 
(1967), Chile 
> (1968), Greece/Simbabwe/Singapur (1970), Bangladesh (1972), 
Thailand and 
> Barbados (1973), Australia and Ecuador (1974), Columbia and Kuwait 
(1975). 
> In 1975 it became an international ISO standard.
> 
> The practical and aesthetic advantages of the sqrt(2) aspect ratio 
for these 
> paper sizes were apparently first noted by the physics professor 
Georg 
> Lichtenberg in 1786.
> 
> An article which describes the standards and discusses the history 
of the 
> ISO standards and the American standards is 
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html. That is where I got 
the 
> above, and the history stuff is about halfway down the article - 
headed 
> 'History of the ISO paper formats' and followed by the history of 
the USA 
> formats. Quite interesting.
> 
> Bob Frost.
> 
> 
> 
>  ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tom OConnell" <tomoc@y...>
> 
> 
> There must be some interesting explanation about how and why England
> and Europe use A4 etc. paper and US uses Letter sized (and other
> sizes).
> 
> How and why did they get different standards.