That great bastion of innovation the USA uses a standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) of 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why?

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.)

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?

I love sh1t like that,thanks Kenny.

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?


... mebegs your respectable pardon ...

... by the width of an ITALIAN horse's ass ...

In the late 1930s, the RAF had one of its earlier 4 engine bombers, perhaps the Wellington, but I'm not 100% sure of which one, designed so that the wing span fit into the existing specification, standard RAF hangar of the day.

The airplane suffered horribly in its load carrying ability because it didn't have enough wing area to create the lift needed to haul the weight of a decent bomb load, since the wings were too short.

Designing an airplane to fit into a pre-existing hagar - Brit engineering at its best.  Right, Mick?

It is also said Lockheed's Constellation airliner was designed with a triple vertical tail instead of a more efficient single taller one so it would fit inside existing hangars.

The size of the locks on the Panama Canal determined dimensions of warships through World War II, and is still a major influence on ship sizes.

There is an old saying something to the effect that the only reason God was able to create the world in six days is because there was no preexisting user base.