got this as an E-mail. thought it was funny

[littlewolf]

This is really interesting ... hope you enjoy as much as I did!



RAILROAD TRACKS



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 designed 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 had 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 (including England) for their legions. Those 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.

The next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's butt 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 to the story: A Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad has 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 a factory in Utah.

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, and 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 butt!

AND YOU THOUGHT BEING a horse's butt wasn't important!
Ancient horse's butts control almost everything.

[kimi]

1. I really enjoyed this, thanks!

Nice to learn something new every day, and this was a really enlightening and interesting bit of info.

[applegrove]

2. french people are always complaining about Quebec french and how slanging it is.

The french canadian slang for car is "Char". Now Montreal was settled in the 1600s. Char is short for chariot. french canadian french is more authentic that france french in some instances. It is indeed 'old french'. LOL!

[rurallib]

3. great story for ending the night on.

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

4. Awesome!

Great story.

Unfortunately I started to think about it a little and now I'm a little worried. Just think of all that weight, moving at those speeds all sitting on wheels spaced enough to accommodate two horses' butts. Don't you think it would be safer if we used two Ox butts? Two Water-Buffalo? Two Sumo Wrestlers? :evilgrin:

[Rosie1223]

5. Snopes version

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

:hi:

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

6. Didn't even think to look it up

But then I wasn't planning on doing anything with it. It's still a fun story. If we do ever get high speed rail, then perhaps we can use the story to tell the next generation: See that high speed train there, the reason for this or that is because the we were required to use use a Roman horse butt as a standard unit for all calculations.

It's kind of like asking a kid why the left and right blinker in cars tick at different speeds. When they say they never noticed or they try to say you are wrong, you give them the reason. They blink at different speeds for the blind drivers to know which blinker is on.:)

[littlewolf]

7. wow

I did not even look it up ... sorri for putting out
bogus info .... :argh:

:blush: