Creatures of Habit (America, Roman)

[Runt]

Here’s a really weird little history lesson that shows exactly how much we humans are creatures of habit… and it goes to show that Americans are not as technologically advanced (or creative) as we would like to think. (Given to me by one of my friends at school.)

A major American 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 ***:

Every chariot of Imperial Rome had to have a wheel spacing that was just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two warhorses. The wheels of the war chariots in turn created ruts on the roads that Imperial Rome had built for its legions. Because these were the only roads around in old days and road maintenance wasn’t that great, everyone else had to make sure their wheel spacing matched the size of those ruts for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Later, in England, some of these old roads were still in use, and wagons still had to be built with that odd wheel spacing because, if they tried it any other way, the wheels would break on the ruts.

Now, when people built tramways in England they used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons of that wheel spacing. When rail lines were first built in England, they were made by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways. Thus, the same gauge they used for the tramways (which was based on the wheel ruts) was used for the railways. That gauge, by the way, was 4 feet, 8.5 inches. Now, in America, English expatriates built the U.S. Railroads, and thus our own standard railroad gauge is also 4 feet, 8.5 inches.

Okay, so back to that Space Shuttle. The two huge booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank are called SRBs and are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. Now, the engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, 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. Thus, the measurements used to build what might be considered the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's *** in Rome!

[Lightkeeper]

There's no butts about it, this is funny. Even when we aren't Rome we are doing what the Roman's do.