Cyrus
05-30-2005, 03:45 AM
(Dedicated to Don Schlesinger. Si non e vero, e ben trovato, maestro.)
The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet and 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 horse-drawn 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 its 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 damaging or destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Those chariots were drawn by two horses who were running side by side but enough apart so that one horse would not bother the other in the gallop. In order to maintain the chariot’s stability, the wheels of the carriage were not aligned exactly with the horses’ tracks, but were not too far apart either, in order to avoid any mishaps when two chariots crossed paths on a Roman highway.
We have come to the end of the line: We now know why we have that specific distance of 4 feet and 8.5 inches between the tracks of the American railroad. Because, some 2000 years earlier, in another continent, the Roman chariots were constructed according to the width of the horse’s ass.
There's a coda to that 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 have 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.
In other words, 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.
Have a good week.
And next time you behold some strange specification and begin to wonder what sort of ass was the cause of it, you might just be asking the right question.
snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm)
The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet and 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 horse-drawn 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 its 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 damaging or destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Those chariots were drawn by two horses who were running side by side but enough apart so that one horse would not bother the other in the gallop. In order to maintain the chariot’s stability, the wheels of the carriage were not aligned exactly with the horses’ tracks, but were not too far apart either, in order to avoid any mishaps when two chariots crossed paths on a Roman highway.
We have come to the end of the line: We now know why we have that specific distance of 4 feet and 8.5 inches between the tracks of the American railroad. Because, some 2000 years earlier, in another continent, the Roman chariots were constructed according to the width of the horse’s ass.
There's a coda to that 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 have 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.
In other words, 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.
Have a good week.
And next time you behold some strange specification and begin to wonder what sort of ass was the cause of it, you might just be asking the right question.
snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm)