Järpvall

Summary 253
Chapter 2 analyses the 25-year-long debate on standardization of paper
formats in Sweden referred to as “the format issue”. In 1946, a standard for
paper sizes and formats was published, which built upon the German standard
din 476, and a year later this was made the official standard that was to
be used in the administration of the Swedish state. The chapter frames this
“format issue” within a longer history of paper, and relates it to national as
well as international projects of ordering the world during this time period.
Through this, the process of standardization is put into context. The analysis
shows how the paper format created from the proportion of the page as
1:√2 was associated to a specific idea of rationality, and was conceived as
scientific because of its link to mathematics and to the metric system. The
idea was that if this system of paper formats were to be implemented in
office work, it would make the office itself scientific and rational.
Chapter 3 focuses on what I call the materialization of the paper standard.
In this part of the thesis the consequences of the introduction of the A-
format, and especially the A4-size, are examined. The analysis is split into
two parts, one focusing on paper as an object as such, and the other on paper
as a surface or interface. The first part studies how the efficiency of the office
information system – furniture, machines and office utilities – could be increased
if adjusted to the A4-paper. By modifying desktop drawers, transportation
devices, envelopes and folders according to the width and breadth
of paper, information would flow more smoothly through the system. The
rationality of the paper format, as shown in chapter 2, was further imagined
to be transmitted to the information system – for example as expressed in
ads for writing desks. Part two of the chapter examines how paper based
information became a quantifiable entity in the combination of typewriter
and standardized paper. Because of the fixed sizes of typewriter characters
and paper, the surface could be spatially determined, something that became
important in the standardization of forms.
In chapter 4 and 5 the focus shifts from paper in general to the standardized
form as a media technology. As a consequence of the standard for paper
sizes, the work of redesigning the graphic interfaces of forms began. This
resulted in what was called “the modern form”. Chapter 4 discusses the
question of how forms were defined, and how they related to the broader
genre of documents. The analysis shows how forms were understood as a
specific way of structuring and processing information, rather than a genre.
Information created through and with forms could transform into many