Why does [pdf]latex not produce a page when nothing is in the body?

Question

Having a blank PDF file may be useful for a certain situation that I don't know.

Neither

\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}
\end{document}

nor

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\end{document}

produce a page when each of them is compiled using either pdflatex or latex.

Note: [pdf]latex can produce a blank single-page PDF with the following trick:

\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}
\  
\end{document}

Questions

Why does [pdf]latex not produce a blank single-page PDF when nothing is the input file body?

Answer 1

TeX works (conceptually) by adding material to a 'scroll', then cutting pages from this. Until you add something, there is no scroll to cut material off. As the comments have made clear, there are several ways to force printing a blank page by adding something invisible to the 'scroll'. However, that is very different from expecting blank pages. I wonder how you would differentiate between the case you outline and what happens after the last page of an normal (text-containing) document.