[SI-LIST] Re: FW: Re: Why 50 ohms (urban legend)

FYI - the urban legends page about this:
http://www.snopes2.com/history/american/gauge.htm

At 09:11 AM 1/21/02 -0500, G Korony wrote:
>
>The following article may elucidate what is going on with the 50 ohm!
>George
>
>----Original Message-----
>From: Timothy Van [mailto:tim_van_loan@xxxxxxxxx]
>Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 1:25 PM
>To: pvanloan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; zayacnic@xxxxxxxxxxx; jp_ferrer@xxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: A pretty funny article I saw regarding product design
>
>
>I saw this article the other day and thought you guys
>might like it- just shows how some ideas are good
>enough to stick around for more than a few
>centuries....
>
>-Tim
>
>
>
>Subject:     Truth is stranger than fiction 
>
>The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the
>rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 
>inches, an exceedingly odd number. 
>
>Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they
>built them in England 
>and English migrants built the US railroads. Why did
>the English build them 
>like that? Because the first rail lines were built by
>the people who built 
>the pre-railroad tramways, and that is 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 the same wheel 
>spacing. 
>
>Okay! 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 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
>legions. 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 (or by) 
>Imperial Rome, they all had the same wheel spacing. 
>
>The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet,
>8.5 inches is derived 
> from the specification for an Imperial Roman war
>chariot. Specifications & 
>bureaucracies live forever. The Imperial Roman war
>chariots were made just 
>wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war-
>horses. 
>
>Cut to the present... The Space Shuttle, sitting on
>its launch pad, has two 
>booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel
>tank. These are solid 
>rocket boosters, or SRBs. Thiokol makes the SRBs at
>its factory in Utah. The 
>engineers who designed the SRBs wanted 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 from the factory happens to run through
>a tunnel in the 
>mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that
>tunnel-which is slightly wider 
>than the 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 (space shuttle) was determined
>two thousand years ago 
>by a horse's ass. 
>
>Which is pretty much how most government decisions are
>made. 
>
>
>
> 
>
>
>
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