Interesting trivia! I decided to use this information to do a quick calculation of the average length of line needed per letter written, expecting it to be something in the 1/2 cm to 1 cm range.
I came up with an interesting result.
Here are the calculations I did:
- I converted 35 miles to kilometres: 35 miles x 8/5 km/mile = 56 km.
- I converted 56 km to metres: 56 km x 1000 m/km = 56,000 m
- I converted 45,000 words to letters, based on the old typing standard of 5 letters per word: 45,000 words x 5 letters/word = 225,000 letters
- I calculated how many metres per letter: 56,000m / 225,000 letters = 0.249 m/letter
- I converted 0.249 m/letter to cm/letter: 0.249 m/letter x 100cm/m = 24.9 cm/letter; let's round that to 25 cm.
So that means that each letter uses a line 25 cm in length to draw it. That, if we go back to imperial measurements (feet/yards/miles) is almost 10 inches. 10 inches or 25 centimetres - those are BIG letters!
Conclusion: Either 35 miles is wrong, or 45,000 words is wrong, or my calculations are wrong. I make mistakes when I do calculations. So I redid the math - twice. Still the same answer. So at this point I'm saying one of those two pieces of trivia quoted is very wrong.
Another answer to "Why math?": So we can confirm or contradict information we're given as fact!