The French “Loi sur le timbre (no. 2136)”, is a law on the taxation of paper. It was published on 3 November 1798 (“13 Brumaire, an VII” of the French Republican Calendar). It is of interest as it lists several paper formats that correspond already exactly to the modern international standard paper sizes (a system that was independently proposed by a German standards committee 130 years later):
| Designation | height [m] | width [m] | area [m²] | ISO 216 equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grand registre | 0.4204 | 0.5946 | 0.2500 | A2 = 420 × 594 |
| Grand papier | 0.3536 | 0.5000 | 0.1768 | B3 = 353 × 500 |
| Moyen papier | 0.2973 | 0.4204 | 0.1250 | A3 = 297 × 420 |
| Petit papier | 0.2500 | 0.3536 | 0.0884 | B4 = 250 × 353 |
| Demi feuille | 0.2500 | 0.1768 | 0.0442 | B5 = 176 × 250 |
| Effets de commerce | 0.0884 | 0.2500 | 0.0221 | 1/2 B5 = 88 × 250 |
Special thanks to Benoit Rittaud for sending me the above photos. He took them at the Archives départementales d'Indre-et-Loire for his book “Le Fabuleux destin de √2” (éditions Le Pommier, March 2006, to appear).
See also: History of the ISO paper formats
created 2005-10-07 – last modified 2005-10-08 – http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/loi-timbre.html