Pat Naughtin asked in USMA 21674: >Business cards have not been raised here for some time. As business cards >are an immediate statement about your personal attitude to measuring units, >I wish to raise the issue again for you consideration and comment. > >Business cards > >Possibly you have in your pocket or purse a standard business card - or a >card that your printer told you was a 'standard' size. > >Here is a summary of some of the business cards I have collected and >measured: > >Australian business cards are 55 mm x 90 mm >Danish business cards are 50 x 90 mm. >English business cards are 55 x 90 mm >French business cards are 55 x 90 mm >German business cards are 55 x 90 mm >Japanese business cards are 55 x 90 mm. >Norwegian business cards are 50 x 90 mm. >South African business cards are 50 mm x 90 mm >USA business cards are about 50.8 x 88.9 mm (They are, more accurately, 2 >inches x 3-1/2 inches). > >As you can see, individual and groups of nations are the same size, but >there is no such thing as a single International 'standard' business card. >There are several quite similar in size but there are no fixed international >standards. > >To conserve paper, card, and therefore trees we could decide to use an >International Organization for Standardization (ISO) paper sizes, such as: > > ISO A8 paper or card is 52 mm x 74 mm. > ISO B8 paper or card is 62 mm x 88 mm > >The B8 size seems closest to the business cards that are in current use. > >Credit cards > >Credit cards on the other hand are made strictly to an International >Standard since they have to fit into the various card readers and bank >telling machines in whichever country they are. > >Credit cards are approximately 86 mm x 55 mm so I suspect that they're based >on the old measures of 3 3/8 inches x 2 1/8 inches. As you can see old >International Standards may be based on old measures until the technology >changes - say to face recognition, iris recognition, or to fingerprint >analysis - when SI units will be adopted as all new International Standards >are now written using SI units.
>Pat Naughtin CAMS Two of my old bussiness cards were 51 x 88, which I suppose was intended to be 2" by 3,5" Joseph B.Reid 17 Glebe Road West Toronto M5P 1C8 Tel. 416 486-6071
