A story researched and shared by Brenda Fleming, Aldergrove Chapter
It all makes sense in the end, as you soon will clearly see…
The U.S. 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 designed the U.S. 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 used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, for 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.
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, for their legions, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Those roadways have been used ever since. 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 ft 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever.
So, the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process, and wonder, “what horse’s ass came up with this?” you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.
Now the twist in the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters or SRB’s. The engineers who designed the SRB’s would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRB’s had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch
site through a tunnel in the mountains. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and, as you 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! Horse’s asses control almost everything…. Explains a whole lot of things, doesn’t it?
Author unknown
Illustrations by Vivian Harder, Aldergrove Chapter.
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