Specifications

[Studlover (imported)]

How Specifications Live Forever

================================

When you see a space shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there

are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main

fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.

The SRBs are made by Morton Thiokol at a factory in Utah.

Originally, the engineers who designed the SRBs wanted to make

them much fatter than they are. Unfortunately, the SRBs had to

be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site in

Florida and the railroad line runs through a tunnel in the

mountains. The SRBs had to be made to fit through that tunnel.

Now, the width of that tunnel is just a little wider than the

U.S. Standard Railroad Gauge (distance between the rails) of 4

feet, 8.5 inches.

That's an exceedingly odd number. Did you ever wonder why that

gauge was used? Because US railroads were designed and built by

English expatriates, and that's the way they built them in

England.

Okay, then why did the English engineers build them like that?

Because the first rail lines of the 19th century were built by

the same craftsmen who built the pre-railroad tramways, and

that's the gauge they used.

I'll bite, why did those craftsmen choose that gauge? Because

they used the same jigs and tools that were previously used for

building wagons, and you guessed it, the wagons used that wheel

spacing.

Now I feel like a fish on a hook! Why did the wagons use that

odd wheel spacing?

Well, if the wagon makers and wheelwrights of the time tried to

use any other spacing, the wheel ruts on some of the old, long

distance roads would break the wagon axles. As a result, the

wheel spacing of the wagons had to match the spacing of the

wheel ruts worn into those ancient European roads.

So who built those ancient 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.

And since the chariots were made by Imperial Roman chariot

makers, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Well, here we are. We now have the answer to the original

question. The United States 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.

That's nice to know, but it still doesn't answer why the

Imperial Roman war chariot designers chose to spec the chariot's

wheel spacing at exactly 4 feet, 8.5 inches.

Are you ready?

Because that was the width needed to accommodate the rear ends

of two Imperial Roman war horses!!!

Well, now you have it. The railroad tunnel through which the

late 20th century space shuttle SRBs must pass was excavated

slightly wider than two 1st century horses' asses.

Consequently, a major design feature of what is arguably the

world's most advanced transportation system was spec'd by the

width of a horse's ass!

So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what

horses' ass came up with it, you may be exactly right.

Now you know what is "behind" it all.

~Author Unknown~

:

[cpecke (imported)]

This is an entertaining article that has been floating around the Internet for a long time. Unfortunately, it's not true. According to an article from truthorfiction.com, an article by D. Gabe Gabriel says this tale has existed since shortly after World War II but that history does not support the claims of this story. The Roman ruts according to Gabriel, were not for chariots but for narrow, hand-pulled carts. Although there are many places where the ruts are visible, Gabriel questions that they played a role in English railroad standards 1400 years after the last of the Roman legions. One of the claims of the Erumor is that the width of the ruts was affected by the need to make the chariot and it's wheels the same width as the combined rears of the horses pulling them. Gabriel says there's a statue by Franzoni in the Vatican museum that is regarded as the most accurate depiction of a Roman chariot. The two horses are wider than the chariot and the chariot wheels behind them.

Where did the four-foot, eight-and-a-half-inch standard originate? Gabriel says it was from an Englishman named George Stephenson. Carts on rails had been used in mines in England for years but the width of the rails varied from mine to mine since they didn't share the tracks. Stephenson was the one who started experimenting with putting a steam engine on the carts so there would be propulsion to pull them along. He had worked in several mines with differing guages and simply chose to make rails for his project 4-foot, 8-and-one-half inches wide. He was later consulted for constructing some rails along a roadway and by the time broader plans for railroads in Great Britain were proposed, there were already 1200 miles of his rails so the "Stephenson guage became the standard.

The 4-foot, eight-and-one-half inch width has not always been the standard in the U.S. According to the Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography, at the beginning of the Civil War, there were more than 20 different guages ranging from 3-6 feet, although the 4-foot, eight-and-one-half inches was the most widely used. During the war, any supplies transported by rail had to be transfered by hand whenever a car on one guage encountered a track of another guage. More than 4,000 miles of track was laid during the war to standardize the process. Later, Congress decided the the 4-foot, eight-and-one-half inch standard would be used for transcontinental railway.

Chris

[An Onymus (imported)]

History and anthropology are two fields in which you have to take a whole lot of what is written about the past, with a few grains of salt.

I wonder if the story to the effect that the War of 1812 was started because a horse lost a shoe, has been disproven.

[matt (imported)]

Britain didn't start with standard rail gauge. Railway lines were initially built by companies who petitioned the government to be allowed to build the line. This is why there are so many rail lines in the UK. Each company initially used whatever gauge they wanted. One was even 8 feet wide. You can apparently notice this on the line between Reading and Basingstoke, where the station platforms are far apart leaving a large gap between the two now standard tracks.

In 1846 the United Kingdom passed the Gauge Act, standardising the gauge to 4 feet 8.5 inches. At the same time the Australian colonies were told to do the same. The New South Wales chief engineer was an Irishman, who believed the Irish gauge of 5 feet 3 inches was superior and in 1852 an Act was passed stating the gauge in New South Wales would be 5 feet 3 inches. Victoria and South Australia did the same. In 1854 the chief engineer was replaced by a Scotsman decided to adopt the British standard of 4 feet 8.5 inches, but didn't tell the other colonies. In 1869 Queensland opened its first railway with a gauge of 3 foot 6 inches. In Western Australia the first railway was built with a gauge of 3 foot which was later changed to 3 foot 3 inches. There was no one standard and each still exists. However, the standard of 4 feet 8.5 inches has now reached into all states and territories, alongside their local gauge. The last major laying of standard gauge rail line was just completed a couple of weeks ago, between Darwin and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The line from Adelaide, South Australia, previously terminated in Alice Springs. This line was first promised over 100 years ago by governments of the time but never done.

I suppose the gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches was decided upon as it was the most commonly used gauge in the United Kingdom before conversion.