I received the following in my email a few weeks back and thought I would share it with y’all…along with a little commentary at the end.
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between 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 the first U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines in Europe were designed and 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 designed and built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.
Okay, why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, when they tried to use any other spacing, the wagons were prone to breaking down on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted 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. Since the chariots were all made to certain specifications for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification (Military, as it were) for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.
But one "nagging" question still remains. Why did the design of the Roman army war chariots incorporate that specific track width? Answer: Because the chariots were designed to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
So, the next time you are handed some odd ball specification and you assume that some horse's ass was responsible for coming up with it, you may be exactly right! Thinking inside the box...
Part 2 Some additional space-age thinking: Now the twist to the story.... There's an interesting extension of the story about railroad gauge and horses' behinds. When we 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 Thiokol at a factory in 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 to the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a horse's ass!
So, what is the moral for us in the simulation business? We are in the early stages of an immature technology. A lot of what we do is based on what others have done before us. Basing our work today on the experiences of those that go before us is smart in that it helps keep us from the old ‘reinventing the wheel’ syndrome. However, using past experience without really understanding it is just as dangerous. Every project has limitations in what they do that are based on some very practical considerations. Things like their final objectives, funding, schedule, power outage on the wrong day…most anything can drive their results. Without having some insight these things, it isn’t easy to determine how much of someone else’s work is applicable to your project. It would be nice if, esp. for R&D based efforts, people were forthcoming with their failures as well as their successes but I’m not holding my breath for that one! So the message, especially to those new to the field is: learn from past experiences, don’t reinvent the wheel or toss out old ideas just because they are old. After all, much of the space program is based on F=MA, an equation developed in the 17th Century. But don’t forget, if you only casually understand past efforts and don’t really understand how they apply to what you are doing, then you are just as doomed. F=MA has practical limitations and if you don’t understand them, then you run the risk of trying to use Newton when your problem is better defined by Einstein.
And above all else, keep in mind, if Einstein had not thought past Newton, you probably wouldn’t be reading this now…..
BTW, I received the above in an email that was misdirected to me. I do not have a clue where the original came from so can not give them credit. But who ever traced that story back, they definitely should get do. Nice job whoever you are.
