Mgs'ers
I came across the following remarkable note and thought it may be of
interest to the list as it has British (but no LBC) content.
Russ Wilson
---------------------------------------------
From: Professor Tom O'Hare <tohare@mail.utexas.edu>
> Subject: Mil. Specs
> Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 00:00 EDT
>
> How Mil Specs Live Forever
>
> The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
> 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
> Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US
> railroads were built by English expatriates.
>
> Why did the English people 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 use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they
> tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the
> old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel
> ruts.
>
> So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in
> Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions.
> The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts,
> which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons,
> were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made
> for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel
> spacing.
>
> Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United State
> standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the
> original specification (Military Spec) for an Imperial Roman army war
> chariot. MilSpecs 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 chariots were made to be just wide enough to
> accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.
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