Re: Scales again (froth, gibber!)

On Sat, 27 Jan 2001 15:17:50 -0000, "Robin Paul" <Robin.Paul@tesco.net>
wrote:

>I'm firmly of
>the belief that it arose as an excuse for inflating the absolute size
of
>figures, with a dash of sloppy anatomy to boot. 

Rob, do you have any kind of reference for this? I've seen only
anecdotal
evidence of this. I've tried to hunt down a source for the scale size
thing,
but I haven't been able to find it.

The reason I ask is that I'm pretty certain I heard the "foot to eyes"
thing
in the early 80s, and quite possibly in the late 70s. But I can't find
anything definitive. I haven't found a passage in old rules, or anything
in
any books. Martin Hackett's "Fantasy Wargaming" lists the measurement
as,
"...measured from foot to forehead..." That book has a copyright of
1990. If
you figure it was written a year before that, then we're talking about
that
concept being in place during the big "upsizing" blitz by GW. That seems
a
little quick for the development of the meme in popular wargaming.

But I can't find older books with the reference. 

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan,