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el Frank · January 6th 10, 04:03 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna

On Jan 2, 1:28*am, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
wrote innews

Mike Kaliski wrote:

"Lostgallifreyan" wrote in message
5...
Richard Clark wrote in
:

As the original poster (I presume it was Art) is in the habit of
quoting a German surveyor of the early 19th century; it should have
been settled by the Reichoffice of land boundaries.

These threads seem to be started in the vein of a breathless
discovery of an announcement tucked away in a locked file cabinet in
the janitor's closet in the third basement revealing plans for the
"new" hyper-Hohenzollern horse carriage expressway bypass - as much
as the original comment, responses and counter-responses are so
distinctive by fulfilling that metaphor.

That reminds me of another great bit of writing, on military
standards, I found it online somewhere, it explained how the Roman
roads were decided based on uquestrian travel, went on to show how the
same standard measures persisted through centuries of rail travel and
ended up explaining why it is
that the scale of the solid rocket booster of the most advanced form
of orbital transport known was exactly correlated with the width of a
horse's ass.

Basically true. The ruts on Roman or older roads caused by wagons and
carts meant that any cart not conforming to a standard wheel width
would tip over or lose a wheel. Rail wagons were adapted from road
carts and so the standard was maintained through the Victorian era.
Modern machinery is still essentially set up to those standards to
maintain compatibility with earlier equipment and so that older
machinery can still be maintained. Bit like the DOS prompt still being
available in Windows?

Mike G0ULI

"There is an urban legend that Julius Caesar specified a legal width for
chariots at the width of standard gauge, causing road ruts at that
width, so all later wagons had to have the same width or else risk
having one set of wheels suddenly fall into one deep rut but not the
other.

In fact, the origins of the standard gauge considerably predate the
Roman Empire, and may even predate the invention of the wheel. The width
of prehistoric vehicles was determined by number of interacting factors
which gave rise to a fairly standard vehicle width of a little under 2
metres (6.6 ft) These factors have changed little over the millenia, and
are still reflected in today's motor vehicles."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gauge

I'll buy that it's a lot older, that's the thing about roots, they trace out
further than any effort to cut them does. And given how much they cover, it
seems unwise to consider them a limiting factor. Sure, if you want to fly,
can't stay rooted, but even that little homily doesn't mean that Arthur
Clarke wasn't right about the space elevator. We won't go far until we
build one. And what's the betting its tramlines will still be the width of a
horse's ass or two?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Amazingly precisely wrong!