[NMLUG] [Fwd: A Tribute to Engineering and a Horse's Rump]

[jfleck at inkstain.net (John Fleck)]

As an old newspaper colleague of mine used to say, "Great story. Better
if true."

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm

Cheers,
John

On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 18:39 -0700, Don Wilde wrote:
> specifications
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: A Tribute to Engineering and a Horse's Rump
> Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 15:29:04 -0700
> From: Brian Christian <bchristi@unm.edu>
> Organization: UNM OVPR
> To: undisclosed-recipients:;
> 
> 
> Why is the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters the size they are? Read
> on .....
> 
> A Tribute to Great Engineers.
> 
> Good Engineering Lasts Forever, take for example:  The U.S.standard
> railroad gauge (distance between the rails).
> 
> 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?
> 
> Because they 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
> was 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  maybe 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 for 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 SRB's.  The SRB's are made by Thiokol at
> their  factory in Utah.  The engineers who designed the SRB's might
> 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 had to run through a tunnel in the mountains.
> 
> The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad
> track is about as wide as two horses' rumps.  So, a 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!
> 
> Don't you just love engineering?
> 
> 
> 
-- 
John Fleck
http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/

"In a world gone mad, what right do we have to yok it up?"
 - Griffy