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I've repeatedly seen people talk about measuring their miniatures height based on the eye level and I'm curious where this practice came from? It seems rather confusing. I would think that a model height would be determined by measuring the actual distance between the bottom of the foot and the top of the head. For example when I take a physical exam at the Doctor's office they measure to the top of my head to determine my height (ignoring my hair), not measure to mid eyeball level and say that's my "height".

If one measures to eyeball level, do they also try and weigh objects with one side leaning off the scale to gather partial measurements? If I visit the UK and I need to give a detailed description of somebody is it commonplace to say this bloke is about X cm to the eye and he'd be about Y stones on one foot?

It's from historical wargaming where the different head gear can radically alter the overall height of a figure. The eyes give a common baseline. Consider a 95th rifleman in forage cap versus a French curassier for example.

Yeah, historically people all need to see, so no matter the model, you will always have the eyes clearly available. And since nobody wears high heels to combat either in real life, even if you screw up the sole of the foot because of footwear, it's a very small, negligible discrepancy. With a hat on, though, it can be a bit harder to know where exactly the the top of the head is. Sole to eye is consistent and accurate. On humans anyway.

I don't think anybody measures like that in real life, just for miniatures.

It's a fudge. The whole caps thing is kind of misleading because the location of the head still wouldn't change. Whether you have a shako, a skull cap, or a giant feather head dress, the skull doesn't change. But rather than figure out some basic anatomical ratios, sculptors just measure to the eye and rough it. The big problem is that it tends to distort scale. Scale is a ratio. So in 1:72 a 72 inch tale person would be 1 inch or 25.4 mm tall. Sound familiar? So the figures start getting called 25mm. Then, they get sculpted to 25mm to they eye. Suddenly your 1:72 scale just exploded and is now closer to maybe 1/65 scale. Maybe they start creeping close to 30mm. But it keeps getting called "25mm" or maybe "heroic sale" or other nonsense.

It's nonsense for sure to label scale in mm instead of ratios.

I'd argue it's on the sculptor/art director/manager or whatever, though, if 25mm goes up to 28mm because someone doesn't understand or keep to a standard. It's really unfortunate, too. As someone who collects models from various ranges I'd be all in favor of industry standards.

remember when all this became the standard all you had was written text in a magazine or leaflet with at best a bit of hand drawn art and there were more competing 'scales' too (or more often a lack of them with many sculptors just goingas small as they were comfortable with)

so you needed to be able to figure out that company A's 25mm French (with big hats) going to work with your other minis from company B that didn't have big hats (rather than being for example 20mm and thus clearly too small)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_figure_(gaming)#Scales

Geifer and OrlandotheTechnicoloured bring up very good points. Because it is so inexact, it is vital for figure manufacturers to have good photos, preferably with a measuring device. I collect a lot of 15mm figs and I can tell you they are all over the map from some so short the look closer to 10s to whoppers that should be labeled as 20mm.