Re: (erielack) Interesting

[mike1144_@_frontiernet.net]

George - BRAVO!!!!!!!
  ----- Original Message -----=20
  From: gelwood=20
  To: Erie Lackawanna List ; NYC Mail Group=20
  Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2001 3:28 PM
  Subject: (erielack) Interesting


  The US  standard railroad gauge (width between the two 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 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 tool that 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 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 their  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 destroying  their
  wagon
  wheels.  Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they =
were
  all alike in  the matter of wheel spacing.

  The United States standard railroad gauge of  4 feet, 8.5 inches =
derives
  from the original specification for an Imperial Roman  war chariot.
  Specifications and bureaucracies live forever.

  So the next  time  you are handed a specification and wonder what =
horse's
  ass came  up  with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial
  Roman
  war  chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends =
of
  two war  horses; i.e., the decision was made based upon horses'
  asses!!!!!!

  Thus,  we have the answer to the original question. Now the
  extra-terrestrial twist to  the 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 had 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. So, 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.

  And you wonder why it's  so hard to get ahead in this world.


  George Elwood
  http://www.dnaco.net/~gelwood

------------------------------