"Does not sound right - every knight's armor I have ever seen is built for smaller men - and they would have been the ones to live a "good" life."
That is because every suit of armor you have seen on display was a piece created specifically for display, as an example of the craftsman's skill (usually 3/4 or 1/2 size, much like miniatures by other artisans). It is very unlikely that any real, working armor from the period is extant. The metalurgy of the time would have produced a very stain-able, rust-hungry product. It would have required regular replacing and would likely have been percieved as disposable, whereas a display piece would have been polished, oiled, waxed, and preserved.
Some armor was even made of leather using a boiling process (cuir bolli - "boiled leather") that made it shapeable, very hard when dried, and inexpensive next to the smith's product.
As to height, the showpiece armor, "berths" on sailing ships (likely storage shelves as most navies slept in hammocks), and small furniture (probably reflecting manufacturing capacity vice size of the customer) a good description of our potentially mispercieved notions of people in the past can be found in Michael Crichton's book "TIMELINE."
Just in case citing a novel is considered gauche, Chrichton's footnotes and bibliography point to learned texts he used as markers for his FICTIONAL story....now if we could only make the same clear about the DaVinci Code!
Cheers,
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I hear ya - but them how do you explain the 5'10" doors opennings that I keep knocking my head into in all those European castles?