[modeleng] Re: Fw: INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON, ?
- From: Allen Messer <al_messer@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: modeleng@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:13:55 -0700 (PDT)
RIGHT ON, SHEP!!
Al
--- On Wed, 3/18/09, Shep <shep.28@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Shep <shep.28@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [modeleng] Fw: INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON, ?
> To: "Modeleng" <modeleng@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2009, 4:19 PM
> Cheers! Hubert
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> INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON
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> Railroad tracks.
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> Be sure to read the final paragraph; your
> understanding of it will depend on the earlier part of the
> content.
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> The US standard railroad gauge (distance
> between the rails) is 4 feet 8½ inches. That's an
> exceedingly odd number.
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> Why was that gauge used? Because that's the
> way they built them in England , and English expatriates
> built the US railroads.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> So the next time you are handed a
> specification/ procedure/process and wonder
> 'What horse's ass came up with it?',
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> 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:
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> 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.
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> 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.
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