Fellow modelers,
I'm sure this topic has come up sometime in the past but I didn't get to read it so I wanted to ask "why 1/35 scale for armor models?" and "why 1/32 or 1/48 scale for aircraft models?"

Who started making styrene models and why in 1/35 scale for tanks? Was it more convenient to reduce tanks in that scale? But why was it different for airplane models?
And 1/35 scale represents what? 1 inch represents 35 inches in real life? Is it even based on British engineering or metric system? I've been building models since the 1980's and have never found out.

1/48 scale started out as 1" equaling 4 feet.
1/32 scale started out as 3/8" equaling 1 foot.

These measurements are based on the inch/foot method.

1/35 was created by the metric world. I am not sure what the centimeter to meter measurement is but supposedly it translates in metrics.

My opinion is just for the 1/35 scale:
The first tank released on the market was a Tamiya German Panther in 1/35 scale in the early 60 - Why in 1/35 scale? at that time, the first Tamiya AFV was in motorized version, the 1/35 scale had been chosen simply because it could accomodate a couple of type B batteries. Tamiya's 1/35 series tanks got to be known all around the world, but this is the slightly haphazard origin of their rather awkward scale.
(Master Modeler book by Shunsaku Tamiya)