Small Scale Military Headquarters

Since I'm more into planes than armor and vehicles (but I've now picked up a good number of the latter in 1/18), I don't know anything about 1/16 scale, which seems to be exclusively an armor and vehicle scale. I wonder -- how did two scales so close together (1/18 and 1/16) develop?

In the past, I was a 1/24 and 1/25 car model builder, and it always used to chap my a$$ that everything wasn't in one scale. I never knew what the "official" justification was for the two scales, but figured it as something like 1/25 being one-quarter of an even 1/100, and 1/24 being in the spectrum of scales based on sixes and 12s, i.e. 1/6, 1/12, 1/18, 1/24, etc. The latter makes sense as a divisor/multiple of 12, being a fundamental grouping of classic English measurements of feet and inches. And 1/25 makes sense as one-quarter of a metric 100. Maybe 1/16 is also a function of the English system, since it's four fours ...

I guess 1/16 is half of 1/32, but that leads to another question that's always bugged me -- why 1/32? ... and why 1/32 and 1/35, also two scales very close together.

Anyway, I wonder if there's any actual answer to these questions ...

there was a time i built model cars and the 1/24, 1/25 thing used to drive me nuts. 4% difference but just enough to make them look off, side by side..

1/32 goes way back to the early days of model soldiers. It was first called 54mm scale, which was the height to the eyes of a standing soldier figure. It worked out to a 2 1/4 inch tall figure. Why 2 1/4 and not just 2 i have no idea. From there it was calculated to be 1/32 scale. 1/35 was started by japanese model makers as it was more metric but why they would not just have jumped on the 1/32 band wagon and instead decided to develop their own scale, i have no idea. You'd think they would want a scale with mass appeal in order for sales to do well.

1/25 came before 1/24 and ironically, it was the japanese who pioneered 1/24 in car models at least. Ironically because 1/24 is more of a standard system scale than a metric one and is the opposite approach to what they took with 1/35 armour.

1/18 was pioneered by BBurago for diecast cars. It works out to a foot and a half is equal to one inch, so it's a nice standard system scale, but strange for an Italian company, as they were using the metric system at the time.

1/16 preceded 1/18 i believe but i don't know how it came into being, perhaps being double the size of 1/32?

Anyway, it's all very annoying as it has resulted in a division of subject matter over the two scales which are all just far enough apart to look odd together.