The WHY I Do the Things I Do? 12-5-2012

This is a somewhat progressive blog. Feel FREE to begin by clicking to my first post: Boologging Begins

 

Jeff’s college acquaintance shared the following historical and fact-filled Facebook post that tells of the unusual link between the U.S. railroad gauge, horses, and SRBs (solid rocket boosters). The story, as well as the snappy horse picture, both help this blog segue from trains... to horses:

"The US standard railroad gauge (the distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That is an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English ex-patriates 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 spec and told we have always done it that way and wonder what horse’s behind came up with that, 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… 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. 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 2ooo years ago by the width of a horse’s hind end.  And you thought being a horse’s hind end wasn’t important."

Horses certainly have affected decisions, in ways we never would have imagined: Horse width determined war chariot ruts, which determined tramway width, and determined train track width, and tunnel width, and ultimately, solid rocket booster size. 

To easily sum up today's message, I decided to use a twist on the 1960s Temptations song:  ¯The Way You Do the Things You Do¯ to ask this trenchant question: The WHY I do the things I do?... with hopes that this informative post flawlessly segues to the idea of horses as well as the complicated topic of free-will and personal freedom.

Cowboy Jeff IS the little guy on the horse.

Another thing for which I am grateful: Horses, of course, of course! (For the Baby Boomers: ¯of course¯ I remember the talking horse...Mr. Ed)

On Sunday, December 9th my post will pop some bubbles... Deo Volente.