This needs no further explaining...
> Subject: Year 2000 analogy?
> Article written by a professor Tom O'Hare of the University of
> Texas a
> while ago:
>
> Why are railroad tracks 4 feet 8 1/2 inches apart?
>
> The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails is 4
> feet,
> 8.5 inches, That's an exceedingly odd number.
>
> 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?
> Because the people who built the tramways used that same jigs and
>
> tools that they used for building wagons, which use 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.
>
> Who built these old rutted roads?
> The first long distance road 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 all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
>
> Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United
> States
> standard railroad gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches derives for the
> original
> specification for an Imperial Rome army war chariot. Military
> specs
> 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 Rome chariots were made to be just wide enough to
> accommodate
> the back ends of two war horses.
>
> We need only look a few hundred years down the road to see
> legions of
> programmers asking each other why in the world does this date
> have two
> digit year?
>
And for the LBC content: My '75B does not have a Y2K problem, but the
computer that I sometimes use at home to access the LBC websites does!
Ed Nunez
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