Ready for blast off?
Today’s lesson is about the persistence of technology.
Once a standard for technology is set, it is very very very difficult to get rid of it.
Thus, as we enter into an entirely new realm of technology with the web and digital, we should be careful not to infect our new world with remanants from the old.
As we say in the Academies, you have to forget everything you know or you think you know, or old architecture and old ways of working will bleed in, often without your even knowning why or where they came from.
A case in point:
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 designed 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 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.
Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/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 (Two horses’ asses).
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
in 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, 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 over two thousand years
ago by the width of a horse’s ass.
Special credit- Judy Rosenblum
5 Comments
Simon Jackson November 04, 2011
This ‘debunking’ on snopes is incredibly pedantic. Moreover, it does nothing to discredit or diminish the general gist of the article which is still interesting, amusing and delightful – none of which has anything to do with a play on words, simply the unusual and surprising juxtaposition of a beast of burden, that connects back through the development of our culture, with something as advanced as the space shuttle. In invites the reader to consider a horse at the same time as space travel, a combination they would never have previously been inclined to relate. It’s this that makes it so forward-worthy.
The outcome of the civil war as a significant contributing factor is somewhat irrelevant. The gist of it is that English engineering design ended up prevailing in America and the result is a standard that remains to this day.
Nothing in the snopes piece contradicts the central logic of the article, which is:
1. Early forms of transport were in some way governed by the anatomy of the horse.
2. The development of transportation – both vehicles and pathways – followed standards established by these early forms.
3. The design of space shuttle components was constrained by these standards which were present in the rail infrastructure between manufacturing plant and delivery location.
So there!
Michael Rosenblum July 07, 2009
Well there you go.
My mistake.
I stand corrected.
But it does show how fast the web is to verify.
$ July 07, 2009
Yet another example of why blogs are never a trusted source of information.
Aaron July 06, 2009
I hate to break it to you, Michael: This post is the product of a horse’s ass. It’s totally bogus.
I thought you of all people would know better than to trust a random e-mail forward, then republish it without verification—especially one that’s easily debunked.
There wasn’t even a standard railroad gauge in the U.S. until well after Reconstruction. During the Civil War, there were THREE gauges in use!
This is surely not because Northern horses had wider asses than Southern horses, and horses west of the Appalachians had yet a third average ass-width.
Snopes has the full debunking.
Simon Kinsinger January 13, 2015
You really don’t get it do you? How long did you go to school in the first grade my friend!