everyone-- to appreciate ana's message, you need to scroll down and click on
the url near the bottom.
really worth the trouble!!
mike
On 7/15/06, Ana Marjanovic-Shane <anamshane@speakeasy.net> wrote:
>
> This is very amusing, but after you have read and enjoyed this, try this
> site:?
> http://www.spikesys.com/Trains/st_gauge.html
> Jim
>
> Begin forwarded message:
> > *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 English
> > expatriates built the US 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 used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
> >
> > *
> >
> >
> >
> > *Okay! ??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 (and
> > England )
> > for their legions. ??The 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.
> > The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is
> > derived from the
> > original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. 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 army*
> >
> > *chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of
> > two war horses!*
> > Now, the twist to the story
> >
> >
> > *When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, 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 at Utah . The engineers
> > who designed the ?SRBs would 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 happens to run through a tunnel in
> > the mountains.
> >
> > 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 over two
> > thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.** And you thought
> > being a horse's ass wasn't important!*
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> __,_._,___
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ana Marjanovic'-Shane,Ph.D.
>
> 151 W. Tulpehocken St.
>
> Philadelphia, PA 19144
>
> Home office: (215) 843-2909
>
> Mobile: (267) 334-2905
>
> ana@zmajcenter.org <mailto:ana@zmajcenter.org>
>
> http://www.speakeasy.org/~anamshane <http://www.speakeasy.org/%7Eanamshane
> >
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
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