[matthiasl]

ATM cells have 48 byte payloads.

Supposedly that was because different groups involved in the standardisation process wanted either 32 or 64 byte payloads.

[marcus0x62]

Supposedly it was the largest size the French contingent to the standards committee would accept. They wanted a very small sample size to reduce the need for echo cancellation in their network.

[chungy]

That's definitely a "split the baby down the middle" kind of solution.

[Paul-Craft]

More like a "fuck all you guys, I'm going home" kind of solution, if you ask me.

[drewolbrich]

I think there's a similar story for the HDTV 16:9 aspect ratio.

[abwizz]

conveniently about the size of a typical ip+tcp header