A Train, a horse, a rocket launcher…
This explains A LOT! Who knew?!
It starts with railroad tracks amazingly. The U.S. Standard railroad gauge or distance between rails, is 4 feet, 8.5 inches (143.5 centimeters, 1.435 meters.) That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Well, that's the way they built them in England and English expatriates helped design the U.S. Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
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? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wagon wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Maybe cargo vs weight bearing…. Nope, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England. The spacing of the wheel ruts had been long since established before wagons.
So, who built or better who used those old roads, creating the ruts?
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 or perhaps destroy their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. And why was this the measurement for Rome?! Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.
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. Interesting! So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure or process and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this? You may be exactly right.
Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters or SRBs. The SRBs were made originally by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.
The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, 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 ass.
Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it?
Author unknown-edited by Annette Aldridge
What is inside you that was determined a LONG time ago and has long out lasted its purpose? Isn't it time to upgrade some of your programs, processes, habits and coping mechanisms? The New Year is a great excuse to use to start something a new.