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Read on . . .
Unbelievable . . .
Be sure to read the final paragraph, but your understanding of it
will depend on the earlier part of the content. This is amazing and
very funny.
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.
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 had 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.)
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 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.
And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important?
Ancient horse's asses control almost everything.
And current horses' asses are controlling everything else.
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Why we're in the fix we're in.
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Re: Why we're in the fix we're in.
By: acam on Thu, 21 February 2008 20:17 |
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Cool!
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Brunel
By: acam on Fri, 22 February 2008 12:33 |
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Re: Brunel
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Re: Brunel
By: timmy on Sat, 23 February 2008 00:48 |
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Re: Brunel
By: Scott on Sat, 23 February 2008 01:10 |
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And here's another one
By: JFR on Fri, 22 February 2008 06:47 |
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Re: And here's another one
By: Nigel on Fri, 22 February 2008 09:12 |
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Re: And here's another one
By: acam on Fri, 22 February 2008 12:41 |
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Re: And here's another one
By: Nigel on Fri, 22 February 2008 22:07 |
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Sweden pics…
By: Nigel on Sat, 23 February 2008 00:04 |
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Re: Why we're in the fix we're in.
By: Deeej on Fri, 22 February 2008 09:05 |
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