Miniatures in D&D

So I found myself browsing my old copy of the 1980 basic D&D rules (Moldvay) and came across an interesting notation about gaming surfaces in the game.

“Combats are easy to keep track of when large sheets of graph paper, covered with plexiglass or transparent adhesive plastic (contact paper), are used to put the figures on. The best sheets for this use have 1″ squares, and the scale of 1″ = 5′ should be used when