[modeleng] Fw: INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON, ?

Cheers!   Hubert

 

 

         

         

               

                    INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON

                    Railroad tracks.


                    Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding of 
it will depend on the earlier part of the content.

                     

                    The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) 
is 4 feet 8½ inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

                    Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built 
them in England , and English expatriates built the US railroads. 

                    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 tools that they used for building 
wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

                    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? Imperial Rome built 
the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their troops. The 
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 for fear of destroying their 
wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all 
alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard 
railroad gauge of 4 feet 8½ inches is derived from the original specifications 
for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

                    So the next time you are handed a specification/    
procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with it?', 

                    you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were 
made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two 
horse's asses.) Now, the twist to the story:

                    When you 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 fuel rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol 
at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRB's would have 
preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's 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 SRB's 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. And you thought being a 
horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost 
everything... and 'CURRENT' horses' asses are controlling everything now, too.

                     

                     
                   

               
             

         

         
     
       
     

h

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