Ah, the old Roman horses butt story has arrived again. This hoax has
been around for years. (I too was fooled for several years.)
Five feet is the width of track of Welch miners in the 1600s. They used
horse power, wooden rails, and the flanges were on the OUTSIDE of the
wheels. So the five foot gauge was to the OUTSIDE of the rails. This
was great at three miles per hour.
Add steam power in the early 1800s and thus began speed race. Around a
tight curve and the outer wheels raised up and lost contact with the
rail. Because the flanges were on the outside, the other wheel promptly
slid off the rail into a spectacular wreck.
Moving the flanges to the inside fixed the problem. Only now the track
needed to be laid for INSIDE flanges. Subtracting the width of the
rails (plus a little wiggle room) gave four feet, eight and one-half
inches.
Most railroads today use four feet, nine inches and go as much as nine
and a quarter on curves. (This widening also has a story, but today's
story is just the original width.)
Finally, wagons were built to all kinds of widths to not fall in and
thus AVOID the ruts.
Thorin
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Has everyone seen this?
Posted by: "David Scott" [email protected] dscottassociates
Date: Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:36 pm ((PST))
Subject: AN INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON
Railroad tracks. This is fascinating.
Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding of it will
depend
on the earlier part of the content.
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 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.
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. 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.
Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a Specification/Procedure/Process and
wonder 'What horse's ass came up with it?' you may be exactly right.
Imperial Roman army chariots were madejust wide enough to accommodate
the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now, the 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 SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at
their
factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRB's would have
preferred t o make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's 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
SRB's
had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wide! r 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 thought being a
horse's ass
wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything...
and current Horses Asses are controlling everything else.
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