That is interesting.
In the old days when I forgot my tape measure I would use my foot as a rule. The foot measure is called a foot because..well you know the answer.
Bump,
For a small Sunday morning smile,
From someone who does believe that history matters 😇
GB,
Tatt
In millimeters, the gage dimension is 1435.
The square root of the gage is then calculated to be a nice round 56.5 MM
Well at least it is a standardize system. If not
there could or would be systems of various sizes.
It would be a mess if there were different systems
across the USA, etc.
And a mile is 5280 feet because . . .?
Great story. Regardless if any of this is true or not, we all live in a world that was built throughout history. The quote I learned that describes this reality was, ‘It is like a turtle on another turtle’s back, all the way down.’
During WWII Germany and Japan were able to build the biggest ships they could but ours had limits. All US ships had to fit to travel through the Panama Canal and under the Brooklyn Bridge.
Why is the Pentagon shaped that way? Because it was built to the shape of the property it’s on.
Cornpop
/random Biden
So, why don’t we drive on the left side of the road like the Brits?
So, the only thing more important than a horse’s ass is two horse’s asses.
Is Harris on the left side or is Pelosi?
Or as Spock would say, fascinating.
Maybe an Urban Legend, but in the pre-computer age I talked with an engineer who worked in Detroit. When looking over specs for an automobile, he noticed that a vertical zero line split the design in half, with the right having positive numbers and the left negatives. The negatives were a pain during calculating. Why? "It's always been done this way".
He said someone looked back in the records and discovered that the original horse and buggy was divided between the horse and carriage, with a vertical line delineating the transition. That spec was carried over into the automotive age.
Very cool information.
Thank you.
I’m passing this along.
This 2001 article builds on the premise a bit more.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/
Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that 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 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 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.
Even worse, Thiokol wanted to build the boosters at the Cape, but the Utah congress person demanded that they be built in Utah to give the jobs to his state. That was the only way to get his necessary vote for the Shuttle project.
So not only did they have to be made smaller to fit through the tunnels, they also had to be segmented for the trip. And then put back together at the Cape with O-rings between each segment.
You remember the O-rings, don’t you?
Loved this story :)