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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
designed 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 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's 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.
Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder
'What horse's arse 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. (Two horses' arses.)
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 SRBs, which are made by Thiokol at their factory in
Utah.
The engineers who designed the SRBs 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, 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 world's
most
advanced transportation system was determined over 2,000 years ago by the
width of a horse's arse.
And you thought being a horse's arse wasn't important?
Horse's arses control just about everything!!
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