Why Things Are The Way They Are

[sunnyrap]

A slightly lighter look at why things are the way they are...
This was in the inbox this morning and seemed so very appropriate to post here on this forum which gets very heavy and concerned with the way things are going:

The U.S. 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 designed the U.S. 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 had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

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 (including England ) for their legions. Those 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 Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever.





So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right.





Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

Now,the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that 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 larger, 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, and 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 overtwo thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.


And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important!



Now you know, horses' asses control almost everything...explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it?

[sunnyrap]

I think this is a brilliant illustration of creation: in the beginning there is the Word...and everything follows that word ineffably until it comes full circle. Might as well sit back and just enjoy the show

[gypsybutterflykiss]

Thanks! This really made me smile big

[RMorgan]

Really nice!

I wonder why people still use the royal measuring units nowadays, since we have the metric system, which is much more accurate and easy to understand, convert and subdivide.

I mean, it´s very primitive to measure things with inches, feet, yards, pounds, ounces, etc...

Cheers,

Raf.

[Bo Atkinson]

Yes RMorgan,

Except there is actually a lot of mystical claims made about the measures. (Any numerologists here to comment?) I did not spend enough time to research it further. People have complained about the 16ths and 12ths of inches. As a wooden-boat-worker long ago, i learned of a better notation for fraction calculations. Which i still use mentally. Decimals are a clearer, order for calculating, no doubt there at all, however fractions are ratios and ratios at least can inspire instinctive numerology---- said only through artistic license to number lore, no wrestling or wrangling intended.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Ever hear of the book Civilization One? Forget the author, but he is well-known (can't find the book right now).
In the book, it explains the reason for imperial units and the metric system as well. Don't want to go into it as it would take far too long.
Both systems of measure, believe it or not, are derived from the measure of ... wait for it, a grain of barley! One in terms of length, the other in terms of volume.
Haven't explained it very well, I know, but there you have it.

Okay, I'll go a little further. The entire research began with the observation that ancient megalithic sites all over the world used the same unit of measure for determining the placement of the stones. Over great lengths of time the unit never deviated from its original length. The question was, how could the ancients have transferred this unit over vast distances and long periods of time? This lead to the discovery that the units did deviate slightly depending on the lattitude of the site. But if the lattitude was the same, the unit was exactly the same too. From there the authors (Knight? is one, if I recall correctly) deduced both how they arrived at the standard unit and that both imperial and metric system are natural measures pertaining to the dimensions of this planet.

I'll stop right there.

Real funny, Sunnyrap. I guess being called a horse's ass is not an insult, then, eh? lol