WE'VE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY !
This story is incredible, so take a few minutes for the read, and then sit
back and ponder the situation. Does the statement, "We've always done it that
way" ring any bells?
In the United States the standard railroad gauge (distance between the
rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number, so 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.
So the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches
Was derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war
chariot.
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 war
horses
Now the ironic twist to the story... When you 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 SRB
would 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, as you now know, 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 though being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't
important.
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