I wonder how much needless strain has been caused by the bonkers typographic requirements for academic dissertations?
(in the US, usually a single column text block on 8.5"x11" with 1" margins—and double spaced! my eyes just slip right off these lines…)
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It comes from the traditional typewriter. One couldn’t choose space between lines, so double-spaces were the only option to have room for annotations. As for width, every typed line sums up between 68 and 72 letters, the optimal reading length for a line of text. #typography
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You're right that the chunky typewriter font makes for reasonable line lengths! The contemporary LaTeX'd equivalents, alas, are 90-100.