A4 and Before: Towards a Long History of Paper Sizes

30 Pages·2009·0.881 MB·English

by  Robin Kinross

K B L E C T U R E 6
A4 and before
Towards a long history of paper sizes
Robin Kinross
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences
Meijboomlaan 1, 2242 PR Wassenaar, the Netherlands
Telephone: [phone]
Telefax: [phone]
E-mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.nias.knaw.nl
The sixth KB Lecture was held at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) -
National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague on 11 June 2009.
The Dutch translation was published by Uitgeverij Bert Bakker (c) 2009.
NIAS, Wassenaar, 2009/1
ISBN 978-90-71093-77-7
ISSN 1871-1480
(c) NIAS 2009. No part of this publication may
be reproduced in any form by print, photoprint,
microfilm or any other means without written
permission from the publisher.
K B L E C T U R E 6
A4 and before
Towards a long history of paper sizes
Before starting on this KB lecture I want to thank the two institutions that have
given me such a warm and considerate welcome: the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and
NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social
Sciences). In particular, I have enjoyed the great resource of the KB’s
Papierhistorische Collectie (paper-history collection), which has provided most of
the materials on which this lecture has been based.1
AssoonasIreceivedtheinvitationtotakeupthisFellowship,IknewthatIwanted
toextendapieceofresearchthatstartedtwenty-fiveyearsago,whenwritingmy
book Modern typography, and which I had never found the time to take further.2
In this book I argued that ‘typography’ began not in 1450 with Gutenberg, but
ratheraround1700withinvestigationspursuedbytheFrenchRoyalAcademyand
with the people who began to advance ‘useful knowledge’ in the newly forming
state of Britain. I wanted to shift the emphasis in typographic history away from
the simply visible, and away from the view that sees history as a succession of
1 IthankespeciallyHenkPorck,boththecuratorofthiscollectionanditssoleattendant,forhishelp
andcollaboration.
2 Moderntypography:anessayincriticalhistorywaswritteninthemid-1980s,butpublishedonlyin
1992;asecondeditionwasissuedin2004.Amongthewritingsthatencouragedmythesiswasa
lecturebyH.D.L.Vervliet,‘GutenbergorDiderot?Printingasafactorinworldhistory’,Quaerendo,
vol.8,no.1,pp.3–28.VervlietsuggestedthatDiderot,andallthathestoodfor,contributedas
muchtothedevelopmentoftypographyasdidtheinventoroftheprintingprocess.
A4andbefore:towardsalonghistoryofpapersizes 3
visualstylesandofrepeatedeffortsto‘makeitnew’.Rather,Iwantedtoconsider
somethemesthatIthinkofas‘deeper’:oftheorderingofouractivityoftextand
imageproduction;ofthewaysinwhichwehavebeenabletoarticulateandshare
knowledge, and so become more fully conscious of what we do. This starting
pointoftheearlyEnlightenmentmarksabreakwiththeearlierperiodof‘printing’,
whenitwasmoresimplyacraft,andonewhoseworkingswereoftenkeptsecret.
The standardization of paper sizes is a good example of this much longer sense
of history, in which things change only slowly, and in which they repeat
themselves.
Beforegettingintothediscussion,Ihavetoaddawarningnote:thatIamfreshto
the topic of paper history, and that the particular topic I have chosen to work on
– sheet sizes – is, in the words of a senior colleague, “one of the most difficult
themesinbook-history”.Iwantedtodothisresearchpartlyonbehalfofmyfellow
typographers, because I have the strong sense that we typographers and graphic
designers actually know very little about paper, although we are continually
choosing and specifying paper for use in whatever we are designing. So by
stealing the topic from its specialist historians and giving it this attention, I hope
that at least I can perform some service to my colleagues.
The sheet: folded and cut
We will be looking at sheets of paper, and at folded sheets of paper. The factor of
foldingisoneofthefundamentalconsiderationsIwanttokeepinmind.Onemight
suggest that it is within the nature of a sheet to be folded. This is after all one of
theideasbehindthecodex-form,thecommonbookform.Letmeremindyouofan
agreed definition here. For bibliographers the English word ‘format’ refers not to
anyexactsizeofpageorleaforsheet,butrathertotheconstructionoftheleaves
of the book.3 ‘Format’ denotes how the sheet has been folded, and how many
timesithasbeenfolded.Thusa‘folio’meansthatthesheethasbeenfoldedonce
to give four pages; a quarto means that it has been folded twice to give eight
3 AreliableguidehereisPhilipGaskell,Anewintroductiontobibliography(Oxford:ClarendonPress,
1972).Gaskellisamongthesmallhandfulofbibliographerswhohavethrownaclearlightonsheet
size;AllanStevensonandPaulNeedhamcertainlybelongtothisselectgroup.Ishouldmentionalso
GrahamPollard’sarticle‘Notesonthesizeofthesheet’,TheLibrary,4thseries,vol.22,nos.2–3,
1941,pp.105–37,whichhasbeenaconstantstimulusinthisresearch.
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pages; and so on. By saying that we say nothing about the size of this folio or
quarto. It’s only when we know the size of the sheet that we can then say a
‘foolscapfolio’,and–ifwehaveagreedthedimensionsof‘foolscap’–thiswillsay
exactlyhowlargethesepagesactuallyare.Thisisastrongreasonforknowingthe
sizeofasheetfromwhichthebookoranyothercodex-formitemhasbeenmade.
Iwanttosuggest,tentatively,anotherfundamentalconsideration:aswellasbeing
folded, the destiny of a sheet is to be cut, and it may be that we make sheets of
a certain size, knowing that they will be cut to a smaller size.
Systems of paper sizes
The size A4, and the A series of paper sizes of which it is part, originated in the
large effort of standardization in German industry, which was started already in
the spring of 1917, when the fate of the country’s war effort was uncertain, but
when the need for postwar reform was already clear. So the new paper sizes are
part of that industrial and commercial reorganization and modernization in
Germany,andIthinkthatthetabularasaofdefeatmusthavehelpedthechanges
needed for their introduction. This was where my interest in paper sizes started,
encouraged by the time and place in which I started in typography: Britain in the
early1970s,whenthecountrywasbelatedlyadoptingwhatwerebythentheISO
(International Organization for Standardization) paper sizes, and was going
metric,aspartofitsentryintotheEuropeanCommonMarket(asitwasthen).For
atimeinBritainthenitwaspossibletofeelthekindofenthusiasmforthisreform
that I imagine the New Typographers of the 1920s felt about the measures of the
Deutsche Industrie Normenausschuß (DIN). Some typographers in Britain also
wanted to abolish the old typographic measurement system of the inch-based
typographicpoint,andreplaceitwithmetricmeasures–butthatisanotherstory.4
ThepaperseriesoftheDeutscheIndustrieNormenausschußwasveryconsciously
formulated and was implemented rather rapidly. It can thus be considered the
single exception in what is otherwise an essentially different historical pattern –
4 Seenowthe‘OptimismofModernity’project:<http://www.optimism-modernity.org.uk/>,andan
articleonthemainprotagonistofthemetricpointinBritain:PaulStiff&PetraCerneOven‘Ernest
Hochandreasoningintypography’,Typographypapers,no.8(London:HyphenPress,in
preparation).
A4andbefore:towardsalonghistoryofpapersizes 5
Figure 1. The principles of the DIN series were explained in a pamphlet published
in 1935, by which time the system had been adopted in the Netherlands.
P. Noordenbos, Eenheidsformaten voor papier (The Hague: Hoofdcommissie voor
deNormalisatieinNederland,1935).(PapierhistorischeCollectie,KB:PCNOORME
NOO 02.)
6 K B L E C T U R E 6
of sizes evolving, rather than being formulated, and of sizes being taken up
slowly and haphazardly, against what I suppose was some resistance or at least
indifference. The DIN sizes follow a very clear system: the largest sheet, A0, has
anareaofonesquaremetre;furthersizesareobtainedbyhalving.[Figure1.]Ido
not have the time or space here to go further into the history of this episode of
standardization,althoughIwillpickitupagainatthecloseofmydiscussion.For
nowIwillpointtothefundamentofthesystem:thatwhenthesheetishalvedon
itslongestsidetheproportionofthesidesremainsunaltered.Thisfeaturebrings
all kinds of advantages.
Thepersonwhoexplainedwiththebestsenseofhumourtheprincipleofconstant
proportion in folding was an eighteenth-century German physicist, and a hero to
thoseofuswhohavetroublewithphilosophyandwithhighart:GeorgChristoph
Lichtenberg. In a letter to Johann Beckmann of 1786, Lichtenberg wrote that he
once gave the problem of finding the constant ratio to a young Englishman to
whom he was teaching algebra.5 The solution goes as follows:
We have a full sheet with sides of lengths a and x, which we fold in half on its
longest side (x) to become a folio.
So the sides of the full sheet are a : x
Then the sides of the folio are a : ½x = x : 2a
These two sheets are to have the same proportion:
a : x = x : 2a
So:
x² = 2a²
and:
x = a√2
So the ratio of the sides to each other will be as follows:
the full sheet = a : a√2 = 1 : √2
the folio = ½√2 : 1 = 1 : √2
and so on ad infinitum. The constant ratio is 1 : √2.
In this letter Lichtenberg asked a question that I can take as a starting point for
my investigations: “Are the rules of this proportion prescribed to the paper-
makers, or has the proportion just been disseminated through tradition? And
5 G.C.Lichtenberg,Briefwechsel,Band3,Munich:Beck,1990,pp.274–5.
A4andbefore:towardsalonghistoryofpapersizes 7
where does this proportion come from – it surely hasn’t arisen by accident?” Ten
years later, 1796, Lichtenberg published an article ‘Über Bücherformate’ in the
Göttinger Taschenkalender, and set out a formal proof, which I have followed
here.6 In a memory of his lessons with the young Englishman, he wrote that ‘any
beginner in algebra’ should be able to work out the constant ratio.
So now you see how the theme of paper size standardization fitted so perfectly
with my suggestion that ‘the modern’ is ‘an unfinished project’ (to borrow again
the phrase of Jürgen Habermas in his celebrated Adorno Prize lecture of 1980),
and a project that came alive first in Enlightenment Europe. In fact this argument
canbemadeevenmorestronglywhenoneknowsthatin1798–orrather,onthe
13thBrumaireoftheYear7–alawsettingouttermsforthetaxationofpaperwas
passed in the French parliament. Six sizes of paper were proposed, five of them
having the 1 : √2 proportion.7
Althoughthisepisodeiswellknown–itwasaroutineelementinthehistorythat
the Deutsche Industrie Normenausschuß gave in explaining its paper
standardization–whatisnotmuchnoticedisthattheareasofthesesheetssizes
aregiven.Hereisananticipationof–oranideasharedwith–theDINsystem,as
I will explain. The fact of imposing taxes on paper had already (France in 1741,
England in 1712) entailed a definition of sizes. Of course, to define a set of sizes
inlawdoesnotmeanthatonecantakethedefinitionasacompleteandaccurate
description of the actually existing set of sizes in that time and place.
The law of the Year 7 was able to use the very freshly established metric system,
whichhadbeencodifiedinalawoftheYear1(August1793).Itisclearthatsuch
ahighlyrationalizedsystemofsizesonlyreallybecamepossiblewithmetrication.
Todescribeitinameasuringsystemthatisbasedin12unitsratherthan10units,
and whose allied system of measuring weights and densities is similarly
duodecimal, would be – to say the least – inelegant. But, like the Republican
calendar, and even more the proposal to decimalize the smaller units of time
(hours, minutes, seconds), metrication of dimensions met with resistance in
6 G.C.Lichtenberg,VermischteSchriften,Band6,Göttingen:Dieterich,1867,pp.266–71.
7 J.B.Duvergier,Collectioncomplètedeslois,décrets,ordonnances,réglemens,avisduconseil-d’état
...,Tome11,Paris:Guyot,1835,pp.33–41.Photographsofwhatmustbeacontemporary
publicationofthislawcanbeseenat<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/loi-timbre.html>:thisis
partofMarkusKuhn’sveryusefulwebsite‘Internationalstandardpapersizes’.
8 K B L E C T U R E 6
France, and even more so in the countries to which French influence was
extended.8 That the law of the Year 7 came to nothing seems clear: it expected
paper-makers to change their norms overnight and it assumed that the metric
system would be implemented quickly. But the progress of metrication was slow
andwashamperedbyaseriesofset-backsandcompromises.Onecanfindsome
proof of this in the Manuel du fabricant de papiers by Le Normand, a book
published in Paris in 1833. Fifty named sizes are given and they are described in
the old measures of ‘pouces’ and ‘lignes’, very much as in the law of 1741. There
had been a revolution, but it seems that nothing had changed in the world of
paper. Only in 1840 did the metric system become legally binding in a France
ruledagainbykings:“Thestrugglebetweenstateandsocietywasnowconcluded;
it had lasted half a century.”9
Early standardization
Now, I want to address this difficult and untidy matter of the sizes that were
actually used before these Enlightened schemes began to be formulated and
beforetheadoptionoftheDINsizes.WecanreturntoLichtenberg’squestion:“Are
therulesofthisproportionprescribedtothepaper-makers,orhastheproportion
just been disseminated through tradition? And where does this proportion come
from – it surely hasn’t arisen by accident?”
We may start with the process of making paper – if we understand this term to
meanthesubstancethatwasmadeessentiallyfrompulpedrags–asitwascarried
outfromitsearlieststages.Theplaceanddateoftheinventioniscommonlygiven
as China in around 105 AD. The process of making paper began to spread west:
toBaghdad(around800),toNorthAfrica,toSpain(around1150),andfromSpain
toItalyandtherestofEurope.Theprocessofmakingpaperdidnotchangemuch
until its mechanization, from around 1800 in France and England.
The essential element in making paper by hand is the mould. [Figure 2.] The size
of the mould gives the size of the sheet. So the size of the mould is already a
8 WitoldKula’sMeasuresandmen(Princeton,NJ:PrincetonUniversityPress,1986)givesagood
accountofthisresistance,basedonarchivalsources.Iowemuchtothiswonderfulbook.
9 Kula,Measuresandmen,p.263.
A4andbefore:towardsalonghistoryofpapersizes 9
Figure 2. A mould and deckle (date unknown). The face of the mould measures
39.5 x 54.5 cm overall; the deckle measures 41 x 56 cm overall. The inside edge
of the deckle measures approximately 21½ x 15½ inches: the size of sheet made
by this mould. (Papierhistorische Collectie, KB.)
standardization:onceyouhaveamould,youcannotchangeitssize;youcanonly
make or acquire other moulds of a different size. This description needs to be
made more precise: in the last analysis it is not the mould that defines the size,
butratherthe‘deckle’thatgivestheprecisesize.The‘deckle’,astheGermanand
Dutch senses of the word suggest,is a frame, or a rectangularfence, placed over
the mould.
Inordertokeeptheprocessgoingquickly,pairsofmouldswereused.Themaker
covered a mould with the deckle, slid it into the vat of macerated fibres in water,
formedthesheetofpaperfromthepulphehadgathered,removedthedeckleand
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