George Bernard Shaw said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Consider this interesting chain of design sent to me by a subscriber:

The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. Think that is an odd number? Think again! Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. 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? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Sometimes specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder who came up with it, 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. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.

Now the rest of the story... When we 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 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 from the factory had 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 is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, the major 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 behind!

And you wonder why it's so hard to get ahead in this world!

Transforming Tomorrow

According to The Health News Index, "Where Do Americans Receive their News about Health?"

More Americans (95%) reported closely following the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon than any other news story in the history of the Health News Index.

Half of Americans (51%) reported that they closely followed news coverage of the discussion over which stem cell lines would be eligible for research with federal funding.

More than four in ten (45%) of Americans followed the lawsuit involving a pharmacist accused of diluting cancer drugs.

Three in ten Americans (30%) followed recent news about a federal judge placing a temporary block on President Bush's discount prescription drug card plan.

Americans were also asked about their most important source for health news and information. Half of all Americans (51%) report that television is their most important source of health news and information, while one in five (21%) Americans says newspapers are their most important source.

For more information, please contact Jennifer Webber at 650.854.9400 or visit the Kaiser Family Foundation website at www.kff.org.

Published: October 29, 2001

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