Engineering: In a lighter vein

[Christy Mccarron]

Here is an interesting article. A 'root cause analysis' in the truest sense!

The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4
feet, 8.5inches. That is an exceptionally odd number.

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



Why did the English build them that way?
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.



So why did the wagons have that particular odd 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 the ruts in the roads?

The ruts in the roads, which everyone 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 U.S. 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 end of two war
horses.

Thus we have the answer to the original question.

Now the twist to the story....... When we see a space shuttle sitting on its
launching pad, there are two booster rockets attached to the side 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
might 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 had to run through a tunnel in mountains. The tunnel is slightly
wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as
two horses' behinds. 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 ass!!!

 

[embaleTwelp]

amazing find BD.

 

[nuegzuiwisuizyeep]

damn awesome find!!....

why is the dog still man's best friend??

 

[dull_sux]

just :awesome: