DameDarkness
Posts: 341
Joined: 10/1/2004
Status: offline
|
A Horses ass
JUST A QUESTION OF STANDARDS
Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any
bells...?
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4
feet, 8.5
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.
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 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 legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? (Rut is the root word for road! AZ)
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.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived
from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And
bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a spec and told we have always done it
that way and wonder what horse's ass came up with that, you may be exactly
right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough
to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
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 rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at
their
factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would 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 from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the
mountains. The SRBs 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 ??
_____________________________
Into the night sky I fly through distant lands and darkened streets... Up into the clouds to play and dance with the moon.....To the hearts of all and I say to you be true to they own heart.
|
A Horses ass - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread