Average (as measurement)

The modern use of average was pioneerd by a belgian mathematician Adolphe Quételet who measured the chest dimensions of over 5000 Scottish soldiers. According to his study the “true” Scottish chest size was 39 and three-quarter inches. In his thought, everyone and body, being optimally fed and living under the same environmental conditions, would correspond to such average measurements.

Having experienced problems with their cockpits, the U.S. Air Force conducted research in the 1950s in order to find the average soldier's (or human's) body dimensions. During the research thousands of bodies were measured on ten critical physical dimensions. Arriving at ten average body dimensions, one of the researchers found that not one of the measured bodies would correspond to the average dimensions of all ten criteria. Designing with average dimensions is like a one-size-fits-nobody solution.