Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 19:09:23 PST
Reply-To: james peters <rickenhacker@HOTMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: james peters <rickenhacker@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: SI vs. dumb (0 cc's Vanagon content)Long
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
Who knows why things are the way they are.
Something I got at school; I hope you enjoy it.
Who said Engineering wasn't an exact science?
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5
inches. (Wonder how much that is in metric?)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 people 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 tools that they used for building
wagons,
which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they
tried
to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old,
long
distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in
Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions.
The
roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for
fear
of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots.
Since
the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in
the
matter of wheel spacing. Thus, we have the answer to the original
question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5
inches
derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war
chariot. Specs and Bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you
are
handed a specification and wonder what horse's backend came up with
it,
you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were
made to be just wide enough to accommodate the backends of two war
horses. Now the twist to the story....
There's an interesting extension of the story about railroad gauge and
horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch
pad,
there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main
fuel
tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are
made
by
Thiokol at a 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 to the
factory
runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through
that
tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the
railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most
advanced
transportation system was determined by the width of a horse's
backside!
" Good Grief Charle Brown!"
>From: t obrien <robot_works@HOTMAIL.COM>
>Reply-To: t obrien <robot_works@HOTMAIL.COM>
>To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
>Subject: Re: SI vs. dumb (0 cc's Vanagon content)
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 00:48:44 GMT
>
>>Can anyone tell me, why we didn't switch in 1976 to the simple, clean,
>>easy-to-use metric system from the backwards, inches/fluid
>>ounces/furlongs/quarts/drams/pints/rods/tablespoons/acres/yards/pounds/cups
>>system?
>
>We did. It was short circuited by the Reagan Revolution. *L*
>
>Just look at highways built in the late 70's. Like the one from going south
>out of Tuscon AZ. All the signs were in Metric with miles subtitles.
>After two years in Germany in the late 70's, I still convert quite easily
>from English to metric and back. Not a problem.
>
>
>
>
>tim
>______________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
