RALPHG
September 5th, 2003, 02:23 PM
Doe's the statement we've always done it that way ring a bell.
The US standard railroad guage is 4feet, 8.5 inches.
Now that's an extremely odd number. Why was that guage used.
Because that's the way they built them in England, & English expatriots 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, & that's the guage they used.
Why did they use that guage then.
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs & tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.
OK, why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing.
Well if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would breakon 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 in use ever since. And of course the ruts in the roads.
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone 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 US standard railroad guage of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is directly derived from the original specification for an imperial roman war chariot.
And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a spec & told we have always done it that way & wonder which horses arse came up with that, you may be exactly right, because the imperial roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back end of two war horses.
NOW THE TWIST TO THE STORY.
When you see a space shuttle sitting on it's 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.
These SRB's are made by Thoikol at there factory in UTAH. The engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to 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 happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains.The SRB's have to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, & the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses hind quarters.
So a major space shuttle design feature of what is arguably the worlds most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horses arse.
And you thought being a horse's arse wasn't important.
The US standard railroad guage is 4feet, 8.5 inches.
Now that's an extremely odd number. Why was that guage used.
Because that's the way they built them in England, & English expatriots 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, & that's the guage they used.
Why did they use that guage then.
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs & tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.
OK, why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing.
Well if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would breakon 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 in use ever since. And of course the ruts in the roads.
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone 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 US standard railroad guage of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is directly derived from the original specification for an imperial roman war chariot.
And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a spec & told we have always done it that way & wonder which horses arse came up with that, you may be exactly right, because the imperial roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back end of two war horses.
NOW THE TWIST TO THE STORY.
When you see a space shuttle sitting on it's 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.
These SRB's are made by Thoikol at there factory in UTAH. The engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to 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 happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains.The SRB's have to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, & the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses hind quarters.
So a major space shuttle design feature of what is arguably the worlds most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horses arse.
And you thought being a horse's arse wasn't important.