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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robaustin" data-source="post: 908298" data-attributes="member: 2703">ANother "origin"Here's another "origin" which fits rather well:Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells...?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 Englishexpatriates built the US Railroads.Why did the English build them like that?Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who builtthe 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 toolsthat they used for building 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 wouldbreak on some of the old, long distance roads in England, becausethat's the spacing of the wheel ruts.So who built those old rutted roads?Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (andEngland) 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 tomatch for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariotswere made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter ofwheel spacing.The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches isderived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman warchariot. And bureaucracies live forever.So the next time you are handed a spec and told we have always done itthat way and wonder what horse's ass came up with that, you may beexactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made justwide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.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 SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokolat their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs wouldhave preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to beshipped by train from the factory to the launch site.The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel inthe mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel isslightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as younow know,is about as wide as two horses' behinds.So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably theworld's most advanced transportation system was determined over twothousand years ago by the width of a Horse's ass.And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important.</blockquote>

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