Does the expression, "We've always done it that way" ring
any
bells?
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails)
is
4 feet, 8.5inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why
was that gauge
used? Because that's the way they built them
in England, and English
expatriates built the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like
that? Because the first rail
lines were built by the same people who built
the pre-railroad
tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did
"they"use that gauge then? Because the people who
built the
tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used
for building wagons,
which used that wheel spacing. Okay!
Why did the wagons have that
particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing,
the wagon wheels
would break on some of the old, long distance roads
in
England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built
those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the
first long distance roads in
Europe (and England) for their
legions. The roads have been used ever
since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed
the
initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of
destroying
their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made
for Imperial Rome, they were
all alike in the matter of wheel
spacing.
The United States standard
railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5inches
is derived from the original
specifications for an Imperial Roman
war chariot. And bureaucracies live
forever!
So the next time you are handed a specification and
wonder
what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right,
because
the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide
enough to accommodate the
back ends of two warhorses.
I'm really getting into this origin thing...it's
great!
Macy
Now the twist to the story... There's an interesting
extension
to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When
we
see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are
two big booster
rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel
tank. These are solid rocket
boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah.
The
engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to
make them a
bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by
train from the factory to the
launch site. The railroad line from
the factory happens to run through a
tunnel in the mountains.
The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel
is
slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is
about
as wide as two horses' behinds.
SO! A major Space Shuttle design feature
of what is arguably
the world's most advanced transportation system
was
determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a
horse's
ass.... and you thought being a HORSE'S ASS
wasn't
important!