If we are to draw an inference from a very partial description which appears in the current issue of “Process Work,” an American firm, the Chemical Paper Manufacturing Co., of Holyoke, Mass., has either re-discovered or borrowed the idea for a series of standard sizes, which Mr. Alfred Watkins published in the “B. J.” of January 2, 1920. It will, perhaps, be remembered that Mr. Watkins pointed out that a rectangle having its two sides in the ratio of 1: √2 (i.e. 1∙414) yields two rectangles of this same proportion of sides when folded on itself. Geometrically, it can be shown that a rectangle of this shape is the only one which exhibits this property. Mr. Watkins adopted it as the basis of a series of rational sizes for photographic plates. The Chemical Paper Co. evidently have a similar aim, since a diagram of theirs shows the successive smaller areas, all of the same shape, obtained by folding the large sheet once, twice and thrice upon itself. But “Process Work” appears to think that this property is obtained, in some unexplained way, by setting off the series of increasing areas from a single point and on a diagonal or hypotenuse common to all of them. It has, in fact, nothing whatever to do with that, but arises only from the 1:1:414 ratio of the basic rectangle adopted for the production of others by enlargement or reduction. The system has merits, particularly the production of books, and therefore it is no more than fitting that the essential basis of it should be identified with Mr. Watkins’s observation of nearly two years ago.
Source info: Journal title from cutting; date supplied from library copy.
This cutting is pasted onto a sheet of paper printed as below, which has then been tipped into the cuttings book just before page 37. The last three lines of the cutting, starting at “than fitting”, have been lost and are supplied from a library copy.