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Subject:The Persistence of Precisions From:JIMCHEVAL -at- AOL -dot- COM Date:Mon, 29 Sep 1997 13:32:18 -0400
A person on another list inundates me with humor. Never thought he'd come up
with one relevant to technical specifications, but, hey, the odds were on his
side:
<
> Subject: How Specs Live Forever
>
> 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 the US railroads
> were built by English expatriates.
>
> Why did the English people 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 use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they
> tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the
> old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel
> ruts.
>
> So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in
> Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions.
> The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts,
> which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons,
> were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for
> or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel
> spacing.
>
> Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United State
> standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original
> specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and
> Bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a
> specification and wonder what horse's behind came up with it, you may
be
> exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just
> wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.
> >>
Jim Chevallier
Los Angeles
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Visit Chez Jim: Jim Chevallier's Home Page - http://www.gis.net/~jimcheval
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