Per Ed Pawlowski:
Most of us can see things close that you would need a magnifying glass
for. About the only redeeming value or nearsightedness.

In the mainframe computer days - before everybody had a PC on their desk
- I developed a corporate telephone book.

My own bias was 8.5 x 11 pages with the smallest type face (8 points) in
order to get as many names as possible per page.

But when I distributed a few hundred samples in different page and font
sizes I got a big surprise: the overwhelming majority of users wanted
the pages small (so the book would fit under a desk phone) with a rather
large (16 points - much larger than I'd ever dream of using myself) type
face.
--
Pete Cresswell