Think of this the next time someone says, "But we've always done it that way." Ever Wonder Why The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two 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 the US railroads were built by English expatriates. 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. So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications 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 war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question. Now the extra-terrestrial twist to the story... When we 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 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 from the factory had 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 is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, the major 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 wonder why it's so hard to get ahead in this world...

-- grant (organicgrange@yahoo.com), March 25, 2001

Answers

That's great! Love it! Thanks for the belly laugh.

-- chris engle (engle_c@yahoo.com), March 26, 2001.

Reminds me of the story where a lady always cut both ends off a roast before cooking it. Someone finally asked her why she did that, and she said, "Because my mother taught me to do it that way." She decided to ask her mother, who told her it was because HER mother always did it that way. They went to go see grandma, and asked what was the reasoning behind cutting off both ends of the roast. Grandma replied, "Because my pan was too small for the roast!"

-- Lenette (kigervixen@webtv.net), March 26, 2001.

Grant: I was one of the kids who always asked "but why?" That's why I would never have made it in the military! Or, I guess I would have been in the brig, or scrubbing the john with my toothbrush! Great post, Thanks! Jan

-- Jan in CO (Janice12@aol.com), March 26, 2001.

Henry Ford designed the length of the N series tractors so he could get 15 of them ( I think) on a railroad flat car and save on shipping.

-- Hendo (redgate@echoweb.net), April 01, 2001.