Gregory Pittman wrote: > I would think that points came about as part of an effort to have a > unit small enough to measure useful font sizes in whole numbers.
It's always good to be able to respond to your own emails with better information. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_unit -- some tidbits follow. Well, Louis Desjardins will be interested to learn that the whole concept and execution of points in typography is quite French -- Fran?ois-Ambroise Didot came up with this in about 1783 as a modification of an idea by Pierre Simon Fournier. Didot's modification based the measurement on the standard French Royal inch, or pouce (Fournier was a little less precise). The American Point System came about in 1886, but was based on the original idea of Fournier -- 1/6 of an inch (American) is a pica, 1/12 of a pica is a point. Or at least conceptually. Then, as now, Big Business will have its say, and some influential type foundries had their own ideas and therefore it was decided that 83 picas = 35 mm (how do you like the math of that?). Greg
