It is amazing that
a technical specification arrived at centuries ago, has become a standard for
almost all wheeled vehicles around the globe.
One country adopted
a system from another country because it had been tested and tried and proved
to be very functional.
It was so perfect
that no improvement was required, or may be possible to improve upon what had
been already accepted. Interestingly the figure if measurement was arrived
through common sense and not scientific research.
As America emerged as a nation, one of the first demands was for a
railroad system for this vast country.
England had a well established rail road system. In February 1804 a
steam engine pulled a loaded train.
This is what the Americans wanted.
British engineers were invited. They laid the tracks according to the
width of the Standard Gauge of 4 foot 8.5 inches.
The gauge of the railway track is the clear minimum perpendicular
distance between the inner face of the two rails.
How did the Brits arrive at this figure of 4 foot 8.5 inches?
Well, if they used any other spacing for their horse drawn cross
country coaches, the wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads
in England. That was the spacing of the wheel ruts!
Wheel rutted roads in England? Hundreds of years ago! How was that
possible?
Imperial Rome had built the first long distance roads in England for
their chariots.
These roads have been in use ever since.
Roman chariots dug the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match
or run the risk of breaking the wheels.
The Roman chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear
ends of two horses. Two horses’ arses measure 4 foot 8.5 inches!
So, the U.S. standard of 4 feet 8·5 inches is derived from the original
specifications for an Imperial Roman chariot!
The continuing story of the 4 foot 8·5 inches.
The Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad has two big booster rockets
attached to the sides of the main fuel tank.
These are the Solid Rocket Boosters, S.R.B. made by a factory in Utah.
The engineers who designed the S.R.B.s would have preferred to make
them a little bigger but there were constraints. The S.R.B.s had to be shipped
by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad track ran through tunnels and the S.R.B.s had to fit the
tunnel! The tunnel is just a little wider than the track. And the railroad
track is about as wide as two horses’ arses!
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what
has to be definitely the world’s most advanced and sophisticated transport system was determined over two
thousand years ago by the width of a horses arse!
Now consider this;
When the first motor car came to India, the wheels ran in the same ruts
the bullock carts had made!
Amazing! Not really.
We had chariots in India a thousand years before Rome.
Lord Krishna ferried the mighty warrior Arjun to battle in Kurukshetra
in a chariot. He sat facing two horses’ arses. The wheel spacing again was the
width of two horses’ arses, 4 foot 8.5 inches!
At the turn of the last century, along came Henry Ford and other auto
manufacturers in America.
They took it for granted that 4 foot 8.5 inches is the norm for the
track. The wheel base could vary, but not the track.
The indestructible and famous Jeep of the Second World War had a track
of 4 foot 8.5 inches. That track came in very handy.
Take the wheels off, remove the tyres, refit the rims and the Jeep could run on railway tracks the Brits had laid in Burma, Borneo and Malaya before the war.