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From: Sean Jones <tedric@tedric.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 22:24:11 +0100
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 21:37:57 -0400
Subject: The Mind Boggles


Bear with it, this interesting story does relate to space.



       ********   How Specs Live Forever   *********

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 the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English people 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 use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if
they tried to  use any other spacing the wagons would break on
some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing
of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance
roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of
their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the
ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had  to match for
fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war
chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome
they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United
State standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from
the original specification (Military Spec) for an Imperial Roman
army war chariot. Mil Specs and Bureaucracies live forever.

So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what
horse's rump came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because
the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to
accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

There's an interesting extension of the story about railroad
gauge and horses' behinds.  When we see a Space Shuttle sitting
on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to
the sides of the main fuel tank.  These are the solid rocket
boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a 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 to the
factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains.  The SRBs had to
fit through that tunnel.  The tunnel is slightly wider than a
railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two
horses' behinds.  So a major design feature of what is arguably
the world's most advanced transportation system was determined
by the width of a horse's backside.

--
    In an infinite universe, infinitely anything is possible.
                         Sean Jones
               http://www.tedric.demon.co.uk/