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<FONT face="Times New Roman" color=#0000ff
size=3>Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any
bells...?<FONT lang=0 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face=Arial
color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"> <FONT lang=0
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face="Times New Roman" color=#0000ff size=3
FAMILY="SERIF">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.Okay! 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.<FONT lang=0 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff"
face="Times New Roman" color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SERIF"><FONT
lang=0 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face="Times New Roman" color=#0000ff
size=3 FAMILY="SERIF">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.The United States standard railroad gauge of 4
feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an
Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.So the next
time you are handed a spec and told we have always done it that way and
wonder what horse's ass came up with that, you may be exactly right,
because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to
accommodate the back ends of two war horses.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. 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 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. 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 two thousand years ago by the width of a Horse's ass.And you
thought being a horse's ass wasn't important ??<FONT lang=0
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face="Times New Roman" color=#000000 size=3
FAMILY="SERIF">
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