On Feb 15, 2013, at 4:56 PM, Paul Tyson wrote:
> So, be
> careful how you interpret the mandate to "interoperate": sure, horseless
> carriages had to use the same roads and fit through the same passages as
> horsed ones did; but at the same time they shed many of the constraints
> of horsepower transportation, and brought on new problems requiring new
> solutions.
>
Let's see now ... Did
you know that the distance between train track rails in the USA
is 4'8.5" (145.5 cm)?... This is a strangely specific figure
indeed!
So...
Why was
this specific distance chosen?
Because US railroads
were conceived in the same manner they had been in Britain, by
British engineers that had emigrated there, and who thought it
was a good idea since it allowed using existing British-made
train engines straight away.
But why
did the British build their train tracks that way?
Because the first
train track were built by the same engineers that had built the
streetcars of London, where this was the distance used by the
makers of the carriages, and that allowed reusing the same
carriages.
OK - but...
Why were
the London streetcars using this exact inter-wheel span?
Because the first
streetcars ever used had been reconverted horse-drawn carriages.
Hmmm... Well, then...
Why were
the British horse carriages built that way?
Because at the time,
everywhere in Europe, the roads were not maintained and roads
had been cut into grooves by repeated passages and not fitting
into the existing grooves would have broken the axles.
So how did
it come to be that the existing road grooves had that
specific spacing? Simple - the first main
highways in Europe were built by the Roman Empire to ease the
movements of the Roman Legion. And the war carriages used by the
Roman Legion were each drawn by a pair of horses that needed
room to gallop side by side without hindering each other. So to
ensure greater stability of the carriage, the wheels had to be
off the tracks made into the dirt by the horses' hooves, but
could not be too far apart to allow for crossing other similar
carriages coming the opposite way without risk of collision.
So the "bottom" line
is:
The
specific spacing between railroad tracks in the US
is a direct consequence of constraints that were relevant 2000
years ago in a different continent and had as only
reason the width of a Roman horse's ass over 2000 years ago!
BUT WAIT!
That is not all - there's yet another even more modern
consequence of this state of affairs dictated by a roman horse's
ass.
Judge for yourself ...
When we see NASA's
Space Shuttle poised to be launched into space on its take-off
ramp, we can easily notice the two twin fuel tanks attached to
the main larger tank. Now, those side tanks are manufactured by
a company called Thiokol in a factory in Utah. All the engineers
at Thiokol and NASA would have loved to have the tanks wider.
However, their design specs had to take into account
transportation by rail to the launch site in Cape Canaveral in
Florida. Now, there is no way to go from Utah to Florida by rail
without going through miles of tunnels through the Rocky
Mountains. Therefore, it is because these tunnels were just wide
enough to accommodate the tracks dictated by the train's axle's
length that the width of the shuttle's tank is limited to that
of a horse's ass!
In conclusion, the
most advanced means of transportation today, the Space Shuttle,
still depends on the size of an antic horse's ass!
Now, how's that for
Design-By-Inheritance...?!?! ;-)
--
-hak
