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