An Interesting History Lesson

I Just thought I would pass it on.

 

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 made just 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 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 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 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?  Ancient horse's asses control almost everything...

and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.