History By Design

World History By Design

 

Here is a look into our modern life that is very interesting, educational, historical, completely true, and hysterical – all at the same time:

 

The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number, but why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and British 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 the tramway builders use a 4′ 8.5″ gauge? 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 have that particularly 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? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

 

And what made the initial ruts in the roads? The first ruts, which everyone else later had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. (Specifications and bureaucracies live forever.)

 

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two warhorses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.

 

Now there’s an interesting twist to the story about railroad gauges and horses’ behinds.

 

When we 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 rocket boosters, or SRB’s. The SRB’s are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB’s 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 had to run through a tunnel in the mountains and the SRB’s had to fit through that tunnel, which was only slightly wider than the railroad track, and that railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ behinds, as you know.

 

So, the major 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 behind!