Again, unrelated to most common List topics, but for collectors of technology stories, it's a classic.... Jason > 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 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 had 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. And thus, we have the answer to > the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 > feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an > Imperial Roman army war chariot. > 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 Roman chariots were > made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war > horses. > > Now the twist to the story.... There's an interesting extension of the > story about railroad gauge and horses' behinds. When we see a Space > Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets > attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket > boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in 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 to the factory runs > through a tunnel in the mountains. And the SRBs had to fit through that > tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the > railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. > So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most > advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a > horse's Ass! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
