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 built the US railroads.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 that’s the gauge they used.\u00a0 Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the\u00a0 tramways used the same\u00a0 jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.<\/p>\n
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if\u00a0 they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.\u00a0 Bureaucracies live forever.<\/p>\n
So the next time you are handed a Specification\/ Procedure\/ Process\u00a0 and wonder “What horse’s ass came up with it?” you may be exactly right.<\/p>\n
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate
\nthe rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses’ asses.) Now, the twist\u00a0 to the story:<\/p>\n
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 Thiokol at\u00a0 their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would
\nhave 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\u00a0 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\u00a0 now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.<\/p>\n
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two\u00a0 thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass. And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important? Ancient horse’s asses control almost everything…and current Horses Asses are controlling everything else!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"