The U.S. standard railroad
gauge (distance between the
rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
That is an exceedingly odd
number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that is the way they
built them in England and
English expatriates designed the U.S. 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 is
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 had
used for building wagons,
which used that wheel
spacing. 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 is the spacing of the
wheel ruts.
So, who built those old rutted
roads?
Imperial Rome built the first
long distance roads in
Europe (including England )
for their legions. Those 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.
Therefore, the United States
standard railroad gauge of 4
feet, 8.5 inches is derived
from the original
specifications for an Imperial
Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live
forever.
So the next time you are
handed a specification,
procedure, or process, and
wonder, What horses ***
came up with this? You may
be exactly right.
Imperial Roman army
chariots were made just wide
enough to accommodate the
rear ends of two war horses.
Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space
Shuttle sitting on its launch
pad, you will notice that 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 in
Utah.
The engineers who designed the SRBs would have
preferred to make them a bit
larger, 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, and 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
most advanced
transportation system was
determined over two
thousand years ago by the
width of a horses ***.
Now you know, Horses
Asses control almost
everything.
Explains a whole lot of stuff.
