How Specs Live Forever

 The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4
 feet, 8.5 inches. That's 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 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'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 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's 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 benefit 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 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 the answer to the original questions. The United
 State standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the
 original specification  for an Imperial Roman
 army war chariot. Specs and Bureaucracies live forever.
 So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what
 horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because
 the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to
 accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.


 Professor Tom O'Hare   Germanic Lanuages (512) 471-4123
 University of Texas at Austin tohare@mail.utexas.edu