Horses Arse -

Does the expression, "We've always done it that way" ring any
bells? The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between thrails), 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 war chariots were made
just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story...
There's an interesting extension to the story about
railroad gauges and horses' behinds.
When we 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
might 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 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