Why that Size?

There is a speaker/author/consultant out there named Sam Geist. No immediate relation is believed to exist...but somewhere back in our German roots, we shared some connection. Like the "other" Bill Geist.

I met Sam when he was speaking at a conference in Milwaukee a number of years ago. Now, Sam's a little older than me, but not by a lot. However, he has white hair. And on the second day of the conference I heard a voice across the hall cry out, "Hey Geist!" When I turned, Sam shouted, "Stop telling people I'm your Dad!"

Really, I hadn't been...but it was funny that people thought that.

Anyway, I always enjoy his weekly e-newsletter and, this past week, he posted a story I've heard a number of times and always liked. I think you will too:

The United States standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4' 8". Now that is an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by the English expatriates.

Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that is 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.

Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old long distance roads, because that was the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefits of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by the Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have an answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4' 8" derives from the original standard of an Imperial Roman war chariot. Standards and Bureaucracies live forever.

So, the next time you are handed a standard and wonder what horse's ass came up with that, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Rome chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.

Comments

[JEB]

So, it's the Romans again! They're responsible for a lot - like Romansch, the fourth official language spoken by a small minority in my native Switzerland - but I had no clue about this one.

This then begs my question, why do many bureaucratic standards and rules remind me of a horse's ass even though they've got nothing to do with horses??